Ship in a Bottle (Nobody's Heroes)
by Civilized Lee
Summary: Without Jack to compare them to, Gaige comes to realize that the Vault Hunters aren't the heroes she thought they were. One night, with a heavy heart and guilty conscience, she leaves them, in search of redemption, not knowing she would find so much more than she ever expected.
1. Can't Take It With You

**a/n: hi. This idea came from a request I got in February from agianthaus. At first I thought the idea was crazy, but as I thought about it, the more I thought it was just crazy enough to work. Also, since this was in development before the Pre-Sequel was even announced, the Sheriff's characterization may be quite a bit different from what you're used to.**

* * *

When Sanctuary would next wake up, Gaige would already be long gone. She knows she probably owes the others a proper goodbye, but the best she could do was a note. Handwritten, thanking them for taking her in, and most importantly, telling them not to worry. She was never very good at saying goodbye.

The creatures, she could handle killing. They wouldn't hesitate to do the same to her if she let them. The various bandit clans, she could rationalize, as vengeance for killing Reiss and kidnapping Roland. Even if it was only to protect their homes, they were usually the ones who fired first. Hyperion employees, she wasn't sure how to feel about that. Jack had almost certainly coerced them into fighting for him, maybe even brainwashed them. But they couldn't get to the man responsible without killing them first. And the robots, well, they were never alive to begin with, were they?

When she joined the Vault Hunters, she assumed they would stand for everything Jack wasn't. She assumed any mission they undertook was for the greater good. They fulfilled their mission, upheld Roland's promise and avenged his death. When Jack was dead, it would all be over. So she had thought. But the killing hadn't stopped. The feeling she got that she was making the universe a better place died in the volcano along with Jack. Now, there's just violence for the sake of violence. She isn't going to be a part of that anymore.

A loud squealing signals the train pulling to a stop. She hops off, walks through the dimly-lit train station, along the quiet, dusty streets into an old wooden building.

"I believe you're looking for me," she says, holding her hands up in surrender.

* * *

"Open on three!"

The heavy metal door rumbles open and clangs against the wall. Gaige, nearly on the verge of falling asleep, bolts up in her cot. For a split second, she wonders if the Vault Hunters already found her and were trying to spring her, but she quickly realizes it can't be them: there's no gunfire. Only the echoing of bootsteps along the cement walls.

The strides are long and deliberate. Between the heavy thuds of the boots are the tiny thumps of long, slender fingers tapping from bar to bar on the cell. Gaige looks up from the boots and catches a glimpse of the brunette woman's orange eyes. She walks up beside the cot, adjusts her hat, and frowns.

"Get off your ass, prisoner." Her voice is cold and sharp.

Gaige doesn't need to be told twice: she pops up to her feet and looks the woman up and down.

The first thing she notices is how tall the woman is. The high-heeled boots certainly add a few inches, but even so, the teenager barely comes up to the woman's chin. Gaige looks up at ther face. Most of the details are obscured in shadow from her wide-brimmed purple cowboy hat, but she can make out a pair of full hot-pink lips and a sharp, pointed chin. The woman stares at Gaige's left shoulder, or more specifically, at the lack of an arm attached to it.

"Who the fuck are you?" she says, narrowing her eyes.

"I could ask you the same question," she blurts without thinking.

"I'm the law here. That's all you need to know. Now. Start talking."

Gaige bites her bottom lip and drops her chin to her chest. "I'm... I'm here to confess."

For a second, she thought she could see a spark in the woman's eyes, but it might have just been a glare of light shining off her well-polished sheriff's badge. "This ain't a church. Stop wasting my time."

Gaige closes her eyes as the Sheriff turns to leave. This has to end, right here, right now. "I want to confess to murder!"

The woman stops dead in her tracks, then looks over her shoulder at Gaige. "What did you say?"

"Murder. Terrorism. Arson. Possession of unauthorized technology. Stop me if you've heard enough." The woman folds her arms over her chest and remains silent, which Gaige wasn't prepared for, but after a brief pause to think, she keeps going. "Poaching. Possession of and intent to use weapons of mass destruction. Assassination-"

"Alright, alright." She holds up a hand, and Gaige falls quiet. "Quite an impressive rap sheet there. Where's the evidence?"

"Evi- _evidence_?" Gaige lets out a disbelieving laugh. "Alright, how about the smoldering ruins of the Hodunk camp out in the Dust? That was me."

The woman narrows her eyes at Gaige, and for a good five seconds, the only sound to be heard is the faint buzzing of the lightbulb above their heads. After a while, the woman smirks.

"Why are you smiling? Did you just miss the part where I confessed to murder? And like half a dozen other felonies?"

"Honey..." She pulls her shoulders back, and the glare off of her badge shines directly into Gaige's eye in a way that the Mechromancer is sure was intentional. "Do you have any idea what we do to felons around here?"

Gaige looks up into her eyes, then spits out, "I know _exactly_ what you do."

The Sheriff exhales slowly as they stare each other down. Then, she does something Gaige wasn't expecting.

She laughs.

Gaige feels her jaw drop as the Sheriff folds her arms over her chest. "You've got ovaries, honey," she says, a hint of a smile playing over her full lips.

Gaige lets out a disbelieving scoff. "You..." She blinks, stammering for something to say. "You can't... we killed innocent people in cold blood! I- I watched their trailers burn to the ground!"

The Sheriff throws her head back and lets out a short, cutting laugh. "Pah! Innocent? That group of wife-beating, kidnapping, drug-running pieces of shit? Those Hodunks have given me nothing but hell since I took over this town. If you're telling me _you_ took them out, then you did me a favor."

She stares up at her, dumbfounded. "That- that's not all, though, we killed more than them! People that didn't deserve it!"

Gaige shrinks back as the Sheriff narrows her eyes at her again. "There's that word again: 'we'." She studies Gaige's face for a moment, then stiffens up. "I recognize you. You're a Vault Hunter. With those Crimson Raiders."

She shakes her head. "Was," she says, turning her gaze down to her sneakers.

"So the Vault Hunters wiped out the Hodunks..." The Sheriff laughs, stroking a fingertip along her jaw. "Makes sense. They were gettin' along with the Zafords fine enough for a while there. Pretty smart: get 'em at each others' throats and reap the spoils."

"You..." Gaige frowns. "You knew about that?"

"Don't act like you're so transparent. I'm sure your pal Roland told you that you were fighting for the good of Pandora, but you Vault Hunters are no different from any other two-bit merc or bandit slummin' out in the wastes. Only concerned with what _you_ can get out of a deal."

She grits her teeth and shakes her head. "I told you, I'm not a Vault Hunter anymore. I'm done choking on their lies."

The Sheriff smirks. "I figured you'd either be crazy or stupid to come in here lookin' for a one-way ticket to the gallows. But seeing as how you got the hell away from your Vault huntin' pals, I'm pretty sure it's not the latter."

She lowers her eyebrows. "I'm not crazy."

She folds her arms over her chest and looks down her nose at Gaige. "That remains to be seen. You came into my town asking for an execution."

Gaige grits her teeth. "Because I've massacred people! I've done _unspeakable_ things-"

The Sheriff raises a hand, silencing the Mechromancer. "And I can tell you still wanna do some good for this planet. You can't do that swinging from the end of a rope."

"Oh..." Gaige snorts, then bites her lip. "So that's it. 'Join me, or I kill you.'"

The Sheriff exhales slowly, then shakes her head. "No. You can still leave town. I won't stop you."

Scoffing, Gaige rolls her eyes. "If you think I'd join up with the police-"

The Sheriff shoves Gaige down onto the cot. Caught off guard, the Mechromancer hurriedly scoots back until she feels her shoulders pressing up against the brick wall.

"Why do you think crime is so damn low in my town, huh?" The Sheriff puts her right boot on the cot beside Gaige's left hip, and leans down, her orange eyes piercing straight into the teenager. "You're not from around here, so let me clue you in on how shit works in Lynchwood: I'm the only thing keeping those people out there from ending up exactly like the Hodunks, and the Zafords, and all the other sad bastards that got in the way of Jack or your precious Vault Hunters. You don't like me. I get it. But if I'm not out there locking up all those dangerous people, they become animals. With all the shit you've done, with the size of the bounty on your head, did you not stop to think why nobody in this town tried to kill you as soon as you set foot inside? It's because they knew I would kick their teeth in so hard they'd have to swallow their food whole and chew it in their small intestine."

Gaige draws her knees up to her chest, wraps her right arm around her legs, and trembles as the Sheriff exhales sharply through her nose.

"You wanna die? Then go back out there. Take a stand. Find something _worth_ dying over. But don't think I'm gonna throw your life away for you."

After a beat, the woman in purple stands back and walks to the cell door, pausing just before stepping out.

"If you're looking for justice on this planet, you won't find it. You can go back to your Vault Huntin' pals and take their blood money. I'm sure it's a sweet gig." She steps out of the cell, then glances over her shoulder and stares Gaige down. "But you're of a rare kind around here. I don't know about you, but I sleep at night knowing I'm doing my part to make one tiny corner of this shit-hole planet a little more hospitable."

Gaige slowly looks down at her sneakers, listening to the Sheriff's footfalls grow quieter and quieter. Can she even bring herself to go back? The Vault Hunters weren't anything like she thought they would be. Killing Jack was one thing, that was just fighting a greater evil that threatened the entire planet. But now he was out of the picture, and nothing had changed. If anything, the Vault Hunters had only become _more_ dangerous without an obvious threat to work against.

Did Brick need to eradicate the Sawteeth? How much easier would it have been to take Hyperion down if the two bandit clans managed to work together? Jack was a threat to them all, and yet they wasted time, money, resources, and lives fighting each other instead of taking out a common, and much more dangerous, enemy.

Lilith was a goddess to the Incinerators. Sure, they were killing other bandits, but she could have used her seemingly divine powers to guide them in the war against Jack, and they would have accepted her word without a thought. And while brainwashing them by using Lilith would have been morally gray in itself, it still would have been preferable to letting them kill innocent people only to wipe them out later. And for that matter, since when has Lilith, or any of the others, been uncomfortable with acts under the category of "morally gray"?

Krieg always made her uneasy. She wasn't the only one who was never sure Krieg could be trusted, but Maya insisted he seemed to have a very rigid sense of right and wrong. To Gaige, that only meant one of two things: either Krieg was always dangerously close to snapping and trying to kill them all, or the other psychos they killed were just the same as him, trying to kill the bad guys (what was it he called them? The Deserving?). Quite frankly, neither alternative sounded good.

Salvador, of all people, backed Maya up in defending the resident Psycho, but Gaige wasn't sure she ever trusted him either. His rap sheet was longer than the list of things she couldn't stand about Marcie Holloway. And on a more personal level, he was wanted for cannibalism. He _friggin' eats people_. That's not exactly the kind of person she'd call _morally upstanding_.

Zero was a little tougher. Politicians make enemies all the time, and sure, sometimes even ones that want them dead. Again, that seemed like the kind of thing that fell into the morally shady category, but the people Zero killed probably did things more contemptible than killing a single person. Zero had only come to Pandora for a greater challenge, and Gaige had never made out what that meant exactly, but she never got the impression that, for the sake of it, Zero enjoyed killing.

Axton wasn't nearly as dangerous as the others, she thought, or at least not in the traditional sense, but recklessness could be dangerous in itself. He was a glory hound, through and through, and it wasn't unheard of for him to do increasingly reckless things that put their lives in jeopardy. The time he tried to blow up the W4R-D3N with a rocket launcher while it still had Roland trapped came to mind, among other things.

Mordecai seemed to be one of the more level-headed among them. She understood his rage. She's always thought animals were cute, and when she saw what Jack did to Bloodwing, she knew there was no excuse good enough to justify what he had done to the planet and its people. It wasn't Mordecai's morality that got to her, it was what the Sheriff said about how she slept at night. She wasn't the only one who noticed him drinking more after the deaths of Bloodwing and Roland, and while the others seemed worried, they all seemed reluctant to step in and say something. She would have said something herself if she didn't think she'd get laughed out of the room. He'd just ask her, what would a girl who only touched her first drop of alcohol a week after she arrived on Pandora know about how he dealt with grief?

Maya was the only one with some sort of moral direction out of any of them, but even then, her own quest to find out more about Sirens seemed to be more important to her than anybody else. Gaige would have gladly joined her in that quest, if the Siren had ever trusted her enough to ask her to join her in the first place, but the woman seemed to keep everybody at arm's length. It was probably for that same reason that Gaige had noticed Maya reacting in disgust to some of the more morally-questionable acts that the others committed, but yet not once did the Siren actually speak out against them.

The more she thinks about this group of Vault Hunters, the more she realizes it was an alliance of convenience more than anything else. Jack wasn't just a common enemy to focus on, he was the only thing stopping her from seeing the kind of people the Vault Hunters were.

She won't sink to his level.

* * *

Gaige paces back and forth along the platform of the Lynchwood train station, checking the clock on her ECHO every few minutes. The 3:10 to Wyndingham was due in just a few minutes. From there, she wasn't sure where she'd go. Maybe she could stow away on an interstellar shuttle, or maybe she could just find a nice, deserted town out in the tundra where she could find a somewhat quiet spot to hunker down. Or maybe-

She turns her head at the sound of a few pairs of boots walking at the top of the metallic stairwell. Three men and a woman, all of them dressed in dingy brown clothes – or maybe that's just a fine coating of Pandoran dust – look down at her, all with confident grins on their faces.

Or maybe she'd just be dealing with bounty hunters for the rest of her life. No matter how short it may end up being.

The man standing at the front of their diamond formation speaks up first. "Eight-hundred twenty billion dollars." He laughs and spits down on the tracks below. "I can't believe someone with a bounty like that on their head would be stupid enough to roll into a town like this."

Instinctively, she considers how stupid it is of him to announce his plan to capture or kill her on the spot – her warrant didn't specify _alive_. But as the apparent leader of the group cocks his revolver, she wonders if it wouldn't be a bad idea to just go down fighting, considering how ready she was to hand herself over to the Sheriff.

"I should thank you," he says. "You're about to make us all very rich."

The woman standing to his right takes a step forward. "Sorry," she says. "Can't take it with you where you're going."

Before he can even turn around, she puts her pistol to the back of the leader's head and fires. The gunshot reverberates throughout the station, and his head jerks violently forward, a massive spray of blood shooting out in front of him, leaving a gaping red hole the size of a tennis ball on the left side of his head, just above his cheekbone.

The deep-brown-haired woman shoves his limp body over the rail, onto the tracks below. The contemptuous snarl on her face is only exacerbated by the deep, wide scar running from the middle of her right eyebrow, diagonally down over the bridge of her nose and ending at the left corner of her mouth. Her eyes lock onto Gaige, the left colored like fine cognac, the right, underneath the scar, with a pupil glowing a bright red. She smirks. "Take her down."

The other two men, apparently expecting her betrayal, immediately take aim at Gaige and start firing. One of them, with a gray ski mask pulled over his head, jumps down to the lower level and takes cover behind a wall jutting out into the station, while the other draws a pair of SMGs from inside his leather duster and camps out upstairs.

As quick as she reacts, she isn't fast enough to find cover before her shield is knocked down and a bullet grazes her right arm. She dives down behind a few storage crates and groans, gritting her teeth against the burning hot pain ripping through her tricep. When she hears a brief break in gunfire, she risks a glance around the crate. In her rush to find safety, she's lost sight of the woman with the bionic eye.

She takes a few deep breaths, her vision flashing red. The irony of dashing for cover after having willingly walked into the Sheriff's station to surrender herself not an hour before is not lost on her, but there's nothing like searing, agonizing pain to remind her of what she has to live for. Painful as it is, she's not about to let a damn flesh wound stop her from making her final stand.

She can't summon Deathtrap without creating a diversion, first: he's especially vulnerable while being digistructed. She flicks her wrist, and a small round mirror on the end of a metal rod pops out of her arm. Breathing heavily, she holds it out in front of her, scoping the surroundings. For the moment, the bounty hunters seem to have taken cover, but a row of large, fluorescent lights hanging from the ceiling catches her interest. Pressing herself closer to the floor, she lifts the mirror up as far as she dares, then reaches for her storage deck and takes out a submachine gun.

She takes a few deep breaths. Showtime.

Twisting herself around, she pops up and fires off a few bursts at a fuel tank across the room. The acidic rounds start eating into the metal, and the liquid inside starts pouring out and spreading over the ground. She ducks down as the bounty hunters start firing on her from three different directions. She reloads, the adrenaline rush still powerful enough for her to nearly ignore the wound in her arm. They were smart enough to spread out, which at least puts them one rung above the usual fare she had to face off against with the Vault Hunters.

She swaps out her Dahl Scorpion for an electric pistol. After taking a deep breath, she pops out of cover long enough to get a few shots at the tube-shaped lights hanging above them. The bulbs explode in a shower of glass shards and sparks that ignite the pooling gasoline on the ground below. As the fuel erupts into flames, she takes the opportunity to raise her left arm and digistruct Deathtrap.

Not long after he's fully materialized, her robot's shields eat a few rounds that were intended for her. He starts floating in a beeline towards Leather Duster, long metallic claws at the ready. Gaige focuses her attention on Gray Mask, tossing out a grenade to flush him out of cover, then easily whittling down his shields with her pistol. He ducks behind a dumpster as Gaige reloads.

Leather Duster fires off a few bursts at Deathtrap, but the shots don't even slow down the advancing hunk of metal. Panicked, he throws both of his submachine guns at the robot; they both explode and re-materialize in his hands just as Deathtrap bears down on him and leaves three parallel gashes in his left arm with a swipe of his long claws.

Gaige ducks back down as her target blindly fires off a few shots around the corner of the dumpster. She takes a deep breath, counting off his shots, then pops back up, gun at the ready once there's a break in his fire. She vaults over the crates and substitutes her pistol for a shotgun as she stalks closer to the dumpster.

Upstairs, Leather Duster sprints away from her robot, popping off a few shots behind him as he makes his way towards the station's exit. Just as he reaches the outside of the station, Deathtrap snags onto the tails of his coat and pulls his screaming victim back towards him.

Gaige lowers herself as close to the ground as possible next to the dumpster. Gray Mask pops out from behind it a moment later, but she pulls the trigger before he can get a shot off, her shotgun blast launching him back as the pellets slam into his chest, shredding his light armor to pieces. She lets out a delirious chuckle. "Noob!"

Taking a deep breath and turning around, she suddenly remembers the backstabber is still somewhere in the station. Or, at least, she assumes she is, since she didn't hear any feminine screaming coming from where Deathtrap-

The very air curls and bends in front of her, but before she can even ready her shotgun, an unseen force connects hard with her solar plexus. Then, the shotgun is knocked clean out of her hands and sent skidding on the floor behind her, not far from the fire she had started with the fuel tank and overhead lights. A blast of hot electricity washes over her body, ionizing her digistruct holster and, more importantly, the module in her arm.

As she falls back to the ground, muscles twitching and spasming, she hears the telltale sparking sounds of Deathtrap fading out of existence. Dammit. That's just unfair.

The woman's cloaking device deactivates, and she appears in front of Gaige, her black-painted lips spread in an impossibly wide grin. "We _were_ content to split the cash three ways. But I guess I won't mind taking it all for myself."

"Bring it!" Gaige says, mentally kicking herself for not coming up with a snappier retort as she rolls to the side and onto her feet.

Red Eye laughs and puts her right hand on a metal rail. She snarls and pulls at it. The metal squeals and groans until a piece roughly the length of her arm breaks off in her bare hand. Gaige's jaw drops.

The woman swings the metal bar at her. Gaige jumps back, the wind from the swing rippling her shirt. She should've paid more attention when Maya tried to teach her hand-to-hand techniques, but it's obvious enough that the last position she wants to be in is with her back to a wall of flames. She needs to flip the field, fast.

A glint of red to her left catches her eye. A box hanging on the wall, the placard beside it reading "in case of emergency, break glass". Inside it, an axe with a long pick opposite the cutting edge, its yellow handle sticking out against the red metal of its case.

The woman swings the metal bar at her again. In one swift move, Gaige leaps to her left, punches out the glass with her metallic arm, and snatches the axe from the two brackets holding it to the wall. Behind her, the woman grunts again, and Gaige scrambles to her right, the bar slamming into the wall, missing her by inches.

She turns to face Red Eye, now standing directly between her and the fire. Gaige takes the handle of the axe in both hands, getting a feel for its balance. Red Eye takes another swing at her, and she holds the axe vertically, parrying the blow. The woman recoils, and Gaige swings the handle end of the axe up. The knob at the end of the grip connects with Red Eye's chin. She stumbles, dropping the metal bar as she falls onto her back.

Gaige steps forward, brings the axe back over her shoulder, then swings it in a sweeping arc high over her head. Red Eye pushes herself back just as the blade smashes down through the grated walkway, between her legs. Screaming out in frustration, Gaige pulls hard at the axe, but the ground won't let it go.

She sees Red Eye reaching for the broken-off handrail and charges at her. As she lunges forward, Red Eye brings the bar across her shoulders. Gaige feels the woman's boot press against her stomach, and she rolls back with Gaige's momentum while pushing her boot into her stomach. Gaige's feet leave the ground and swing up into the air as the woman flips her over herself. Gaige lets out a grunt as she lands hard on her back.

When she sits up, she feels two strong hands grabbing onto her shoulders. The woman starts leaning into her back, pushing Gaige closer to the roaring flames. She pushes back, struggling against Red Eye's strong grip.

"You're a real handful, aren't you?" she hisses in Gaige's ear. "But... you're gonna be... so worth it..."

Gaige grits her teeth, droplets of sweat beading on her face as the flames draw closer. "We'll see about that," she growls. She leans her head forward, then snaps it back, smashing into the woman's nose.

Red Eye screams and falls back, releasing her hold. Gaige catches a familiar glimpse of silver out of the corner of her right eye: her shotgun. She starts crawling for it, when a heavy weight slams down onto her back, sending jolts of pain shooting down through her legs and knocking her flat onto her stomach.

Gaige grits her teeth and tries to get to her knees, but Red Eye steps beside her, swings her leg back, and delivers a powerful kick to Gaige's face. She collapses onto her stomach, the room spinning and fading in and out of blackness in front of her.

Groaning, Gaige spits out some blood. The entire right side of her face throbs in pain as she slowly props herself up onto her elbows.

"You could've just done this the _EASY_ way!" Red Eye punctuates 'easy' by stomping down on Gaige's ribcage. "You were out-numbered and out-gunned, even with that shitty little robot..."

She keeps talking, but Gaige can't make out what she's saying. She picks her head up just enough to see her shotgun, just an arm's length away.

_Nobody_ calls Deathtrap "shitty".

She quickly shoots her right hand out for the gun just as Red Eye pushes it out of reach with a nudge from her toe.

Red Eye clicks her tongue. "Not this time."

Before Gaige can do anything else, Red Eye stomps down on her hand, and the Mechromancer's anguished scream does little to drown out the cracking of her crushed fingers. She groans, curling into the fetal position and clutching her flesh hand with her metallic one. Her blood pumps heavy in her ears, but beyond that, everything sounds as if it's being muffled by cotton.

A hand closes around her neck and pulls her up clean off her feet and slams her into the wall. Gaige blinks heavily, her head thudding hard against the bricks behind her. Her right bicep is absolutely on fire from the gunshot, her hand is useless, but she's still got some fight in her cybernetic limb. She grits her teeth and tries to pry the fingers off her throat, but they don't even budge. Behind the blood gushing down from both nostrils, Red Eye's scar twitches as her black-painted lips curl into a sinister grin. She lifts her left leg and pulls a gun from the holster on her ankle, then presses the muzzle underneath Gaige's chin. Gaige curses herself for not noticing it before.

She closes her eyes and takes one final gasp of air. The gun fires, and Gaige lands on her feet. The pressure releases from her neck.

Confused, Gaige opens her eyes. The woman lies on her back, arms splayed out to her sides, blood pooled around her head, her left eye socket replaced by a large, hemorrhaging hole.

Gaige's knees buckle. She leans back against the wall and starts sliding down. Slowly, she turns her head to the left. There stands the Sheriff casting a scrutinizing stare back at her, smoke billowing from the barrel of her revolver.

* * *

The smell that assails Gaige's nostrils can only be described as a mix between burnt tires and rotten fish. Her eyes begin to water before she even gets the chance to open them, which would make finding out where she is a difficulty, if somebody didn't tell her outright.

"The clinic?" she says, turning her head in the direction of the man's voice, who she assumes to be the doctor. "What clinic?"

"I haven't given you _that_ many painkillers," the doctor says. "You're in Lynchwood."

She blinks slowly, her vision clearing up. That was right. The Sheriff, the train, the mercs...

She wipes the tears from her eyes with her left hand and looks down at her right arm. There's no trace of the gunshot wound in her tricep, but her hand is heavily bandaged.

"Sheriff Kaplan demanded that I use some of my insta-healths on you. Don't get me wrong, you were in bad shape when she brought you in, but it wasn't anything I couldn't fix."

Gaige looks up at the doctor for the first time, and studies the gray stubble on his cheeks and chin, then the short black hair on his head.

"She must really want you back on your feet," he says, focusing his deep brown eyes on her.

She exhales slowly, then nods. "Thanks, Doctor, uh...?"

"Morvan."

"Morvan," she repeats, putting her right hand gingerly to her side, where the black-lipped woman had stomped on her ribs. She recoils slightly from the pressure, but the pain isn't nearly as intense as she thought it'd be: more from a nasty bruise rather than a compound fracture.

"Yeah, that bitch did a number on you," he says, watching her wince. "Like I said, you didn't need it, but I'm sure you're damn glad the Sheriff made me give you that insta-health. It should heal that broken hand in a couple days."

She brings her left hand up to touch her right cheek and winces involuntarily as she feels the sole of the woman's boot connecting with her jaw again. Her fingers twitch in their cast.

"I'll go let her know you're awake," he says, excusing himself from the room.

She takes the opportunity to whip the small mirror out of her metal arm and investigate her face. She smiles at her reflection – she's sure that bitch's boot must have left a nasty shiner on her, but the insta-health must have taken care of it. She snaps the mirror back into her arm.

A few slow, heavy bootfalls draw Gaige's eyes to the door. The Sheriff stands leaning against the doorway, arms folded over her chest, a smirk painted on her lips.

"You're looking better," she says, giving a quick upward tilt of her chin.

"Implying I _ever_ look bad?" Gaige says, managing to get a smug grin to spread across her face.

The Sheriff chuckles and glances to the side, hooking a thumb into her pocket. "Take it you're feeling better, too."

Gaige nods slowly. If the Sheriff hadn't shown up when she did, the best case scenario is that she'd be dead. Worst case? Well... she stops herself from thinking about it. "I thought you kept the streets clean of people like them," she says, flashing a dry smirk up at the older woman before looking down at her own feet sticking up underneath the sheet at the far end of the bed.

"Don't get smart," the Sheriff says, slowly stepping beside the bed. "You couldn't expect a bounty like that would go unnoticed for long. If I didn't know any better, I'd swear you were trying to get yourself killed."

Gaige stays silent, her hands fidgeting in her lap. The Sheriff knew about the bounty, then. Of course she did. She could've just let her die in that train station. Hell, she could turn her in now, if she were so inclined... if she were interested in the reward.

The Sheriff continues, snapping Gaige from her thoughts. "But like I said, I can tell you still wanna do some good around here. You did fight back, after all. And I saw that robot of yours in action. That's an impressive piece of machinery."

Gaige finds herself sitting up straighter. She looks up eagerly at the Sheriff. "You saw DT?"

"Handled Burton pretty easily." The Sheriff rests her hands on the mattress and leans forward. "I imagine that bot might've saved your ass from Silvestri too, if she hadn't hit you with that ion blast. Though I gotta say, you held your own pretty well against her. Maybe she didn't stop to consider _why_ your bounty is so damn high..."

Gaige closes her eyes, unable to ignore the throbbing in her right hand. "She was so strong."

"Cyborg augmentations," the Sheriff says. "I'm sure you saw her eye. She could've snapped your neck with a twitch of her wrist. Frankly, I'm surprised she didn't."

Frowning, Gaige opens her eyes to look up at the badge on the Sheriff's lapel. "Cyborg augmentations? How do you know that, did you tangle with her before?"

The Sheriff arches her left brow. "Who do you think gave her that scar?"

Gaige focuses on the Sheriff's orange eyes for a moment. "You killed her."

Without missing a beat, the Sheriff says, "I saw her about to kill an unarmed civilian. I took action."

The unexpected conviction in the Sheriff's eyes gives Gaige pause. She looks back down at the foot of the bed and chews on her bottom lip.

"I'm not gonna lie to you." The Sheriff rests her elbow on the bed, leaning in to talk more quietly into Gaige's ear. "I've seen what you can do. It's a rare pleasure to see my officers doing their job around here, and I think you could do a lot of good for this town. Especially with that robot of yours. There are some real pieces of shit out there. Especially on this planet."

Gaige lies back and stares up at the ceiling. Reassuring as the praise is, she knows what kind of person the Sheriff is.

...or, at least, she knows what kind of person the others _told_ her the Sheriff is. The woman did just save her life, after all.

And at least she was smart enough to recognize a damn fine engineer when she saw one.

"The Vault Hunters let you go," the Sheriff whispers, "and that's _their_ loss. It's not that I think I could use somebody like you by my side. I _want_ you by my side."

Closing her eyes, Gaige does her best to fight off the smile threatening to play across her lips.

"I'll understand if you get your ass out of town as soon as you're out of that bed. But..." The Sheriff straightens up and pats her on the shoulder. "Think about it. Hmm?"

The Sheriff starts to walk out of the room, but Gaige speaks up, stopping her at the doorway.

"Sheriff Kaplan?"

The older woman steps back into the doorway, her left eyebrow raised. Gaige looks into her eyes and clears her throat.

"Thank-... thank you."

The Sheriff smirks. "Maybe you'll pay me back someday," she says, before walking out.

Lying back against the stiff mattress, Gaige laces her fingers together and puts her hands on the back of her head. She stares up at the flickering light above her bed, at the crack in the ceiling, lost deep in thought.

Back when she lived on Eden-5, she would've laughed at the thought. But now, seeing the way the bandits – the former family men, workers, and scientists, as Tannis pointed out – turned on each other, seeing how indiscriminately the Vault Hunters killed in their own interests, seeing how Hyperion had either kept civilians living in fear or imprisoned and tortured them, she finds herself wondering if the Sheriff has a point.

* * *

Her hand fully healed, Gaige buttons up her denim vest and sits down on her foot locker at the end of her bed.

Well, not _her_ bed, just the one in her room in the Lynchwood motel.

She picks up one of her sneakers and is about to put it on when the glint of gold on its side catches her eye. She brings it up to her lap and looks at the Vault symbol decal on the ankle.

It has been four days since she left Sanctuary. The concerned messages were starting to pile up. Maya, Moxxi, Axton, Lilith, Brick, Mordecai, Zero had all left her messages. Hell, even Marcus and Claptrap had contacted her. She's sure Marcus is only worried about the impact her not bringing in her usual haul of guns might have on his sales, and who the hell knew what Claptrap wanted.

As much as it pains her, she knows it's easiest to cut contact completely. Even if she'd grown to call that old group her friends, she knows she can't be a part of what they were doing anymore.

No, not even that. It's not that she can't be a part of it. She _won't_.

She slips her shoes on and stares down at her foot locker. After a moment, she lets out an exasperated sigh and kicks it.

She was ready to run again. She was _so close_. Grab the next train out of town and find another interstellar shuttle that could take her to some other remote world. But eight-hundred twenty billion dollars is a lot of money. How long could she expect to run with that price on her head? How long until she ran into another Silvestri?

Gaige looks at herself in the full-length mirror hanging on the closet door.

She couldn't keep running. Running is no way to live. For better or worse, she's learned how to survive on Pandora.

Maybe she owed the Sheriff a chance. Or maybe she owed it to herself.


	2. Of Perpetrators…

**a/n:** What was originally supposed to be a single-chapter Act II quickly blossomed into this long multi-part arc. Hopefully you'll enjoy reading it as much as I've enjoyed writing it.

* * *

Gaige tugs at her collar. She's not sure she'll ever get used to the heat of Pandora.

She leans forward, arms resting on a steel handrail. Spanning across the flooded quarry below is a single pipe, ten feet in diameter, feeding to a pump station below the train tracks a few hundred yards away. Three smaller pipes lead up from the station, pumping out a steady flow of eridium that feeds into three separate tank carriages. She glances over her right shoulder at the eridium refinement plant behind her.

"Over half the people who live here in Lynchwood work in the eridium mines," the Sheriff says. She stands to Gaige's left side, arms folded over her chest. "Ever since Jack died, Hyperion hasn't been taking the stuff."

"Good," Gaige says, straightening up. "I saw what they were using it for. I've... seen what it does to people."

She sighs. Krieg and Tina's faces flash against the backs of her eyelids.

"One of the last things I did with the Vault Hunters... back when we were trying to stop Jack, he was broadcasting this message telling people to emigrate to Opportunity. His great bastion of civilization. We put our own message up over his to show what a bad idea that would be." She sighs and stares down at her shoes, ignoring the sensation of the Sheriff's eyes lingering on her neck. "A few weeks ago, we were clearing out some of his old slag experimentation labs, and... the things we saw..."

She gulps. It's not the sights that haunt her. It's the sounds. The _smells_.

"We had to show the galaxies what he had done. The security videos, the doctors' personal logs, we broadcasted it all. We had to. I don't think anyone would've believed what happened if we didn't."

A distant squealing announces the train moving forward, lining up the next three freight carriages with the pump outlets hanging above them. Purple liquid gushes out and fills the tanks.

"It was your idea?" the Sheriff says.

Gaige nods. "Who knows what good it'll do. Maybe Hyperion will get fined a couple billion dollars. So what? The people they experimented on, they-..." She runs her fingers through her hair and lets out an exasperated sigh. "The ones who died were the lucky ones. And the doctors, the scientists who did the experiments? Nothing's going to happen to them. They'll get away with it."

The Sheriff shrugs. "The Intergalactic Federation doesn't smile on crimes against sapience. They'll never be able to go back to the inner systems again."

Gaige shakes her head. "It's not enough."

"Never is." She tilts her head to the side. "Come on."

Gaige pauses for a few seconds, then turns to follow the Sheriff down the stairs leading to the refinery doors. "With Hyperion pulling out, I would've thought the mines would shut down."

As the Sheriff reaches the bottom of the stairs, the few rat bandits loitering in the area begin to shuffle out of sight, watching her with unease. "Still as valuable as ever," she says. "Big companies pay out the nose for this stuff, trying to harness that energy inside it. Maliwan Corp, Corazza Industries, Anshin Enterprises, S&S-"

"Wait, S&S?" Gaige jumps down the last few stairs, landing beside the Sheriff with a grunt. "I thought they were defunct."

The Sheriff shakes her head. "Hyperion pushed 'em out before they could get a real foothold in the Pandora market. But they're still around. And if their researchers figure out a use for this purple gold... who knows."

"Hmph." Gaige kicks a small rock out of her path, then looks back over her shoulder at the pumping station as it fills three more train carriages. "Well, let's hope none of 'em do what Hyperion did."

The Sheriff takes her hat off and wipes her brow with her sleeve. "So when are you gonna tell me?"

"Tell you what?"

"Why you came here." She puts her hat back on. "You're the chattiest person I know, but you still haven't said word one about what brought you here."

"Guess I wanted a change of scenery," she says, a wry smile on her face.

The Sheriff snorts. "People take vacations to Aquator when they want a change of scenery. People come to Pandora because they're running from something." She glances over at Gaige pointedly. "Or some_one_."

Gaige raises her voice as the whirring and pounding of the giant grinders outside the mines grows louder. "We playin' Twenty Questions now?"

She thinks she can see a smile start to spread over the Sheriff's lips, but the woman looks off to her right before she can be sure. "Didn't think I'd see the day when you wanted to walk in silence, Davenport."

"You call _this_ silence?" she says.

The giant gears spin on their axles dozens of times per second, slamming into the dirt beneath them in a steady, triplet rhythm. The ground shakes beneath their feet as they walk. The Sheriff takes off her hat to wave away the dust floating in front of her face.

"Why so curious, all of a sudden?" Gaige says, as they walk past one of the entrances to the mine. The fresh-faced officer posted beside it nods at the Sheriff.

She ignores him and stares at one of the grinders, slamming down into the ground, kicking up dust in all directions. "You fascinate me."

Gaige raises her eyebrows, leaning forward to get a better look at the Sheriff's eyes. "Yeah?"

"Why somebody like you would get caught up with the Vault Hunters..." She clicks her tongue and shakes her head. "I just don't get it."

Gaige straightens back up and shrugs. "Well, when you're wanted for murder, possession of unauthorized technology, and war crimes, you don't have a whole lot of options."

The Sheriff looks over at her, eyebrows furrowed. "War crimes?"

She chuckles. "Yeah, that... well, thanks to the fact that... _Marcie_..." She grumbles the name with as much contempt as she can muster. "...stole my blueprints and gave them to the Eden-5 planetary police force... Deathtrap was actually classified as a military-grade heavy assault droid! And, of course, civilian possession of something like that is illegal, and that's not even getting into the fact that I both built and used him, so... yeah. War crimes."

The Sheriff lets out an amused chuckle. "So you came here and devoted your considerable talents and expertise to the Vault Hunters."

"Yup, something like that." She lets out a little sigh of relief as they step into the shadow of the large mountain hanging over the town. The air around her instantly cools. "I mean, they seemed like they were on the right side, you know? We discussed the Hyperion occupation in my ethics class, and – damn, that feels like a lifetime ago now – anyway, I was really interested in it. I never thought I'd get the chance to fight back against Jack and actually accomplish something for the people of this planet. When I met them and they asked if I wanted to join, I was like, 'Hell yeah, let's kick this fascist's ass into the next-'"

She clears her throat when she notices the Sheriff looking at her, eyes slightly narrowed, lips just barely split open. She's gotten that look more than enough times to know it means she's rambling.

"Anyway, I didn't have a ton of options. And I thought we could do some good. For this planet, for its people... hell, the whole galaxy, even! And we did, for a while, but..." She sighs and shakes her head.

"Hmm. You wanted to be a hero."

Gaige chuckles. "And you think that's stupid."

"I think it's _incredibly_ stupid."

"Oh, come on, now," Gaige says, looking over at the brunette. "You can't tell me you never wanted to be a hero when you were young."

The Sheriff looks over at her. "When I was _young_? Just what are you sayin'?"

"Uh..." Gaige gulps. "Not that you're not young now, I just-"

Smirking, the Sheriff shakes her head. Gaige rolls her eyes and relaxes her shoulders.

"Holy shit, the look on your face." The Sheriff chuckles to herself.

"I'm serious!" Gaige says, getting back on track. "You _do_ think it's stupid, don't you?"

The Sheriff glances over at her, the smirk slowly falling from her face. "I think that trying to be a hero in a place like this is a good way to get yourself killed."

"I know it's probably naïve, but... this place is better off without Jack. And that's thanks to what we did. But, after..." She sighs. What more could she even say? "It changed. Without Roland, we lost our direction. Nobody could agree on who should take charge. The closest we came to a decision was Maya, but then she refused the position."

"You think it would've lasted much longer if you stayed?"

Gaige shakes her head. She's already stayed up long nights thinking about that. "No. But I don't think I helped. I left at a bad time in an even worse way."

"But you don't regret leaving," the Sheriff says, more an affirmation than a question.

"No. They taught me a lot about surviving out here, and I owe them my life. They were good friends to me." She moves to scratch the bridge of her nose, hiding the fact that she's actually wiping away a welling tear. She inhales deeply through her nose. "But they taught me a lot about myself, too. I'm not like them. So, no. I don't regret leaving."

The Sheriff glances over at her. "Good for you. Life's too short to waste it regretting the past."

Before long, they find themselves at the far end of Main Street, across the way from the train station. A metal walkway bridges over the tracks, leading down a set of stairs to the ground level. The Sheriff stops on the bridge, directly above the train tracks. She looks out over the bustling street, then glances over at Gaige.

Gaige meets her gaze. "Truth is," she says, stepping up beside her and looking out towards the train station, "I don't think I ever fit in with them. From day one, I don't think anybody thought I belonged there. Not even me."

"Maybe you didn't," the Sheriff says, breezily. "Vault Hunters, bandits, mercs, they're all the same. There's two things that motivate them. Most of the time, it's greed. They're loyal to their next paycheck, and not a lot else."

Gaige glances back up at her. "What's the other thing?"

She stiffens up. "Revenge."

As much as she wishes she could say the Vault Hunters aren't like that, the more Gaige thinks about it, the more she realizes almost all of them are. Even she had felt that lust for vengeance. She always wanted to stop Jack, but after Angel and Roland died, that wasn't enough. She wanted to be the one to end it, to put a bullet right between his eyes. Thinking back on it now, it scares her just how much that had driven her.

"But you got out of there," the Sheriff says, snapping Gaige from her thoughts. "You give a damn about more than just yourself. You want to do good for other people. I wasn't just kissing your ass when I said you could help around here."

Gaige glances over at her. "I still don't know if I'm gonna stay. I don't exactly agree with a lot of your methods."

"You're raising livestock," the Sheriff says. "And every night, a rabid skag breaks the fence down and kills some of your herrots. Now you can repair that fence as much as you want, but that skag is gonna break it down every time you build it back up. Eventually you'll come to the conclusion that the best way to keep your herrots alive is to go skag-hunting."

The Sheriff steps back from the rail and starts down the stairs back towards Main Street. Gaige stares out towards the large clock atop the train station for a moment before following her. As she sets her foot on the first step down, something underneath the stairway makes her stop.

The Sheriff pauses at the foot of the stairs and glances back. "What's up?"

Without answering, Gaige scurries down the rest of the stairway and walks underneath the platform spanning the tracks. A metal crate rests alone in the shade. Chained to its open door is a sleeping skag pup.

"Poor little guy," she mumbles, kneeling beside it. She puts a hand to the side of its chest. The pup's eye flickers open briefly.

The Sheriff walks up to one of the walkway's support beams and leans into it, resting her shoulder against the metal. She watches silently as Gaige snaps one of the chain links with her left hand.

"Why would someone chain him up in the heat like this?" Gaige glances up at the Sheriff.

She shrugs, then glances up at the afternoon sky. "I came by here a few hours ago. He wasn't there."

The pup struggles to its feet and limps over to the Sheriff. It sniffs curiously at her boots before hobbling back over to Gaige. She holds her right hand out. The pup sniffs it, then lies back down. "He's hurt," she mumbles.

"Those are claw marks on its side." She nods towards the pup. "Can't be more than a few days old."

Gaige leans over it, looking at the three red ridges running the right side of its body, ending near the hind leg.

"The owner might have been raising him for a fighting ring," the Sheriff says.

Gaige frowns and looks up at her. "That's illegal here, right?"

The Sheriff raises an eyebrow.

"Right." Gaige looks back down at the studded collar on the pup's neck. "You know where we could find some medicine for little..." She grabs the collar's tag. "Dukino, here?"

The Sheriff leans her head back a bit, looking down her nose at Gaige.

"Oh, don't give me that look." Dukino lies down on his left side, and Gaige scratches his tummy, mindful to avoid the claw marks. "He's just a helpless li'l guy, aren'tcha? Aren'tcha, little Dukino?"

The Sheriff glances to the side, then straightens up. "I'll see what I can scrounge up."

As soon as the Sheriff moves, Dukino gets back to his feet and walks over to her. She looks down as the skag pup paws at her leg.

Gaige grins. "I think he likes you."

Dukino sniffs at the Sheriff's left boot, then licks it. Under the wide brim of her purple hat, a smirk spreads over her lips. "Aww, look." She looks up at Gaige, and flashes her a wide, toothy grin, accompanied by a wicked glimmer in her eyes. "He knows how shit works around here."

Gaige bites the inside of her bottom lip, then snorts. Dukino sniffs at the other boot before walking back over to the Mechromancer and lying down beside her.

The Sheriff takes a few steps towards Main Street, then stops in her tracks. "One more thing," she says, turning around.

"Yeah?"

"It's good to have you here, Davenport."

She slowly nods at her, then smiles. "Call me Gaige."

* * *

Several long, quiet days pass in Lynchwood. The Sheriff had warned her that things could get boring, but after all the excitement and exhaustion she had gone through with the Vault Hunters, Gaige is glad for boring.

Dukino's wounds had healed up, thanks in large part to the medicine the Sheriff had found for him. He had even started eating again, much to Gaige's delight. He seems at home in her new apartment, but she wonders if he'll grow too big for it before long. Whenever she needs a break from upgrading Deathtrap or her cybernetic arm, she heads just outside the city limits, looking for a cave nice and roomy enough for her growing ass-kicker of a pup.

She stops by the station one night on her way back home from one of these spelunking trips. Officer Winger shakes his head a bit when she tells him she's looking for the Sheriff, then points her to The Box.

The Sheriff is already in the middle of the interrogation when Gaige steps into the observation room. It takes her a while to recognize the suspect, but once she does, she patches into the Sheriff's ECHO device and calls her out of the room to talk.

"What do you want?" the Sheriff asks, the door banging shut behind her.

Gaige looks through the two-way mirror at the tired blonde woman, cradling her forehead in her palms. "Where did you pick her up?"

The Sheriff folds her arms over her chest. "Anonymous tip. What does it matter?"

"Why is she in there?"

"Hyperion personnel ain't exactly popular around here, in case you haven't noticed." The Sheriff stares down her nose at Gaige. "Word gets out one of Jack's old butchers is in town, we're gonna have a damn lynch mob on our hands, and that's a pain in my ass I could do without."

The blonde takes her glasses off and sets them on the table. Gaige looks back at the Sheriff. "This isn't right."

The Sheriff stares back at her, lips set in a slight frown.

"You didn't hear those ECHOs," Gaige says. "I'm sure there were plenty of doctors at that Preserve who enjoyed what they did, but Dr. Samuels was only doing it to protect her wife."

The Sheriff looks through the window at Dr. Samuels, who is running her jittery fingers through her hair. "Last week, you were talking about how unfair it is that the victims – _her_ victims – won't get any justice for what she did to them. Now you're telling me she shouldn't be punished for what she did?"

"What she-" Gaige scoffs. "She's just as much Jack's victim as any of those test subjects were!" She balls her hands into fists and clenches her jaw. "She was coerced!"

"She had a _choice_." The Sheriff takes a step forward.

Gaige stands her ground, toe-to-toe with the Sheriff. "A choice? A _choice_?! If she didn't run those experiments, somebody else would have! If she defied Jack, she would've been tortured to death with the rest of them!"

They stare each other down for a moment, but the Sheriff is the first to break eye contact. Gaige exhales sharply. She won't be beat on this.

"Look," she says, lowering her voice. "I know that what she did was horrible. I'm not trying to say it wasn't. But... what wouldn't you do for somebody you love?"

The Sheriff's jaw clenches. She stares through the two-way mirror, chewing her bottom lip. After a moment, she turns the knob and opens the door to the interrogation room. Dr. Samuels bolts up in her chair.

Without saying a word, the Sheriff unfastens the restraints around the doctor's wrists. The blonde looks down at her hands, then back up at the Sheriff. "You're... letting me go?"

The Sheriff stands back and tilts her head towards the door. "Just get the hell out of my town. Before I change my mind."

Gaige already has the doctor's personal effects gathered by the time she reaches the front door. There isn't much: a small storage deck unit, a pair of small pearl earrings, and an interstellar shuttle ticket, departure time scheduled for the next morning. Without a word, Samuels takes the earrings into her left palm. She looks down at them, running her index finger over them, and then along the gold band on her left ring finger.

After she puts the earrings on, Samuels takes the storage deck and the boarding card, her lips moving inaudibly.

"The next train to the spaceport won't leave for a few hours," Gaige says, looking at the dark circles under the woman's bloodshot eyes. "You could get a room at the motel, catch some sleep. You look like you need it. More comfortable than trying to sleep in the train station, anyway."

Samuels stares down at the ticket in her left hand, her brown eyes vacant, glossy, lost in a fog of thought. After a long pause, she nods, but Gaige isn't sure she actually heard a word she said. The doctor's hand moves to the handle of the front door.

"Hey, Winger?"

The gray-bearded man sitting at the nearest desk looks up at Gaige. "Yeah?"

"Why don't you take Dr. Samuels here to the motel?" she says. "Make sure she gets there safe."

His gunmetal blue eyes track over to the blonde woman standing silently by the door. Nodding, he picks his hat up off the desk and stands up. "Not a problem."

"Take care of yourself," Gaige says, turning back to Dr. Samuels.

She offers a weak smile in return. "Thank you."

Dr. Samuels opens the door and steps outside, holding it open behind her for Winger. Gaige's stomach twists and churns as she watches them walk down the moonlit street.

The Sheriff walks up beside her and folds her arms over her chest.

Gaige looks up at her. "How long have you been on this planet?" she asks.

"Just about five years."

Gaige looks back out the window. Officer Winger and Dr. Samuels walk around the corner of a building down the road, and out of sight. "How many people have you seen leave?"

The Sheriff nods towards the door. "She'll be the first."

Gaige smiles, her eyes lingering on the vacant road. "You think she'll be happy? Once she gets back to her wife?"

"Killing her would've been easy," the Sheriff says, drawing a reproachful glare from Gaige. "Living with herself... that won't be."

Nodding, Gaige looks back out the window. "She did it for her wife. They'll be together soon." Her chest heaves as she inhales deeply. "And they'll be away from here."

"Yeah. I suppose."

Gaige glances over at her. "What do you mean by that?"

The Sheriff presses her lips together, then turns on her heel. "She'll get away from here. But a place like this?" She shakes her head, then starts to walk back to her office. "It never leaves you."

* * *

Most nights, Gaige would be content to work on upgrading Deathtrap, or taking Dukino out for some spiderant hunting. But she was already out in the Dead Sands earlier tonight, and her mind is too occupied for her to enjoy working on her robot.

Some nights, like tonight, she misses her old friends. No matter what they did or didn't do, they were a second family to her. They butted heads, they didn't always get along, and they certainly didn't choose each other, but they were all they had.

She misses the good parts about them. She's grateful for how they helped her. But she's not stupid. She knows when it's time to leave.

But damn if it doesn't get lonely without anyone to shoot the breeze with.

Lynchwood's bar doesn't exactly have the same atmosphere as Moxxi's. It has music, and food, marginally more edible than what was available at the dive in Sanctuary. It's even got a few friendly faces, though they're the exception, not the rule. Conversations don't drift between tables. If someone throws a knife, it usually isn't in the direction of a dartboard.

Still, it has alcohol, and that's enough for the moment.

Gaige works on her second Lynchwood lemonade of the night as she flicks through the screen on her ECHO. Maya still sends her a message every day. Lilith and Axton have tried in the past couple days. Would it really hurt so much to let them know she's still alive? Even just one of them? Maya hasn't missed a day in messaging her yet, and Gaige gets the distinct impression that she won't stop anytime soon.

Family. What wouldn't they do to know their family is safe? What didn't she do to keep tracks on her own parents when they were forced to flee the Eden system? Angel had scoured feeds everywhere from the Inner Systems to the Outer Rim. She scanned millions of news stories, faster than Gaige ever could have done even with her considerable programming knowledge, and still found nothing. Her dad was good at staying off the radar.

She never felt comfortable, always wondering if they were still out there, safe. But as Angel told her dozens of times, no news is good news.

After a moment's hesitation, she closes the contact screen on her ECHO device.

"Surprised to see you in here, Davenport."

Gaige jolts up in her seat, her heart leaping into her throat at the unexpected sound of the Sheriff's voice behind her. "Son of a _bitch_, how do you walk so quiet?"

The Sheriff smirks and sits on the barstool to Gaige's left. "Didn't mean to scare ya."

She puts a hand to her chest. Her heavy pulse slowly dies down into an easy rhythm. Now that the initial jolt has worn off, she finds herself irritated at the Sheriff's use of her last name. The Sheriff says it in a teasing, honeyed voice, not at all like the way Marcie Holloway used to, but it still reminds her of that stuck-up bleach-blonde bitch all the same. She strongly suspects the Sheriff knows perfectly well how it gets under her skin. "Yeah you did."

The bartender hands the Sheriff a glass filled with amber liquid and a couple ice cubes. "Maybe a little," she says, that same devilish smirk still painted on her lips.

Gaige sighs, shaking her head. "You keeping an eye on me?"

"Thought I'd see how you're acclimatizing."

She snorts. "Constantly wondering if I'll ever get off this planet, always looking over my shoulder in case another bounty hunter decides they want my head, keeping one hand on my holster at all times, sleeping with one eye open..." She shrugs and downs what little is left in her glass. "You know. Same thing I've been doing since I first got to Pandora. Except now I don't have anyone watching out for me. No offense."

"Mm." The Sheriff takes her hat off and places it between them on the bar. "What about Dukino? Haven't seen him since you first found him."

Gaige grins and straightens up. "Oh, my gosh, he's gotten so big, so fast! You wouldn't even recognize him. And he scares the _hell_ out of the rats!" She giggles deliriously. "I dunno why they hate him so much, but every time I'm out there with him, they take one look at him and scurry away."

She looks down at her empty glass and smiles for a moment. Skags really do grow like weeds. The pint-sized pup she had found chained to that crate now came up to her knee, and she's sure he's not done growing.

She glances over at the Sheriff, who is scanning the room. All of the other patrons seem intent on avoiding her stare, while Gaige can't seem to catch her eye. "Hey." She clears her throat, and the Sheriff turns to look at her. "Why is it that I've told you so much about me, but I still don't even know your first name?"

The Sheriff quirks an eyebrow. "Because getting you to stop talking is like telling a rakk hive not to smell like a sewer?"

"Hmm. So that's it." Gaige turns to the bartender and signals for another drink.

The Sheriff chews the inside of her lip. "_What's_ 'it'?"

"Nah, you're just like those badass outlaws in those old westerns on the ECHOnet," she says, grinning. "Won't let anyone get close. You don't talk much, so that when you do, people are sure to listen. Nah, you let your gun do the talkin', don't you? You're-" She giggles and looks over at her. "You're just like Josie Wales."

The Sheriff gives her a skeptical look. "Doesn't she die at the end of that movie?"

Gaige scoffs. "Fine. Pretend I'm wrong."

The Sheriff swirls her drink in her hand, then chuckles. "Tell you what." She takes a sip. "You got the time it takes me to finish this drink to ask me whatever you want. Deal?"

She eyes the glass. Two fingers left. "You're not just gonna down that in a minute, are you?"

"And waste good whiskey like that?" She lets out a little snort and shakes her head, setting the glass back down on the bar. "Not a chance."

"Okay, then." Smiling, Gaige straightens up in her seat, her mind already teeming with questions. "Deal."


	3. …And Victims

"So," Gaige says, resting her chin on her fist and looking over at the Sheriff. A grin begins to creep over her lips. "Where are you from?"

The Sheriff clears her throat. "Tangaroa." Upon seeing Gaige's blank stare, she clarifies. "Second-biggest moon of the planet Rangi. In the Ikaroa Fringe."

"The outer systems." Gaige hums. "You miss it there?"

She traces a finger along the rim of her glass. "Don't care enough to miss it."

Gaige snorts. "I miss Eden-5. There's nothing more I'd want than to be able to go home again, but... well. Can't really do that anymore. How long has it been since you left?"

"Fifteen years. Give or take." The Sheriff takes a slow drink.

"So, since you were...?" She raises an eyebrow, waiting for the Sheriff to finish her sentence.

She smirks. "Younger than you. Not by much."

Gaige chews her bottom lip. "What made you come to Pandora?"

She sighs. "Could've been any one of the borderworlds, really. Elpis just happened to be the most appealing option. Plenty of action, out where nobody gives a shit who lives or dies. Then Jack hired me and a few other mercs... and then things started turning to shit down here, so some of us came planet-side, and..." She shakes her head. "Well I guess you know the rest."

"Jack," Gaige mutters. The name leaves a bitter taste in her mouth. "I keep forgetting you dated him."

Gaige looks over thoughtfully at the Sheriff. She has trouble thinking of Jack as anything but the masked psychopath. The thought of him being a dad, a husband, a boyfriend, seems alien to her. She's never bothered to think of what Jack was before Pandora: if he might have been a caring, if viciously protective, father. She's never thought of him being married, or dating, or doing anything but bringing misery.

The Sheriff drops her gloved hand to the bar top. "He was... different, back then. Elpis... changed him. Place like this could do that to anybody."

Gaige frowns. Wasn't that the exact reason she had come to Lynchwood? Because she was afraid of what Pandora was turning her into?

She shudders. Did she just feel a twinge of sympathy for Jack?

"You alright?" The Sheriff looks over at Gaige, one eyebrow quirked.

"Fine," she says, before taking a drink. The Sheriff does the same. Gaige frowns at the brunette's glass, too close to empty for her liking. She's about to change the subject, but her curiosity gets the better of her. "Did you love him?"

The Sheriff runs her fingers through her hair and sighs. After a long silence, she says, "Not... in the way you're asking."

Gaige blinks. She glances down at her lap, then back up at the Sheriff. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"People like him..." The Sheriff's hand moves to her glass. "The matter of love is irrelevant."

"Irrelevant to who? Him? Or you?"

She chews on her bottom lip for a second. "Yeah."

She studies the Sheriff's face, trying to get a read on what she might be thinking. Her tangerine eyes study the rim of the glass in her hand. Her lips are set in a slight frown – or is that just their natural shape? Gaige bites the inside of her cheek.

After a while, Gaige's cheeks start to flush, and she glances away. "Do you miss him?"

"No."

Gaige blinks, not expecting such a quick and blunt answer. "It's not weird sitting next to me, knowing that I had a part in killing him? It's weird for me, I can't imagine how weird it must be for you."

The older woman glances over at Gaige, her expression flat. "I don't think about it."

"Not even a bit?"

The Sheriff starts to lift her glass to her lips, but Gaige puts her hand on the brunette's arm.

"Top her off," she says to the bartender.

He nods, and refills her glass. The Sheriff makes no move to stop him, merely raising her eyebrow, then glancing over at Gaige.

"Just playing by your rules," she says, with a mischievous grin.

After a brief pause, the Sheriff smirks. "That's funny."

She glances down, then takes her metal hand off the Sheriff's arm. "So... you really don't miss him, then?"

The Sheriff shrugs. "People die, we move on."

"You make it sound so easy."

"Which would be great." The Sheriff takes a slow drink, then sets the glass back down on the wood with a satisfying thunk. "If it were supposed to be."

Gaige folds her hands in her lap and looks down at them.

"After a while, you realize how pointless it is trying to hang on to something you've already lost. Once you do, it's easier to let it go."

Tucking a strand of loose hair behind her ear, Gaige looks up at the Sheriff. She clears her throat. "So... so what do you do when you've lost what you were fighting for?"

The Sheriff traces a fingertip along the rim of her glass. "Fight like hell to keep what you have left," the older woman says, staring blankly ahead, past the mirror opposite her. "And if they try to take that, make 'em pry it from your stiff little fingers. But you don't give up." She turns to look at Gaige. "You _never_ give up."

"But- but what does it even _matter_ if-"

"You're still alive." Her voice is icy with conviction. "That's _all_ that matters."

Still alive. About that much, the Sheriff is right. And on Pandora, that's no small feat. Though she isn't so convinced that the only thing that matters is keeping herself that way.

"Do you think I did the right thing?" she says, in a low, soft voice. "When I told you to let Dr. Samuels go?"

Gaige meets the Sheriff's calculating stare for a moment, then turns her head back towards the dirty glass in front of her.

When she gave Samuels that ticket, the look on the doctor's face wasn't that of anticipation, or relief, or joy. Her thin lips were set straight. Her pupils were dilated. Her breathing was shallow. The woman didn't even blink.

"I always thought that my time here would be temporary," Gaige says, her eyes losing focus. "Not just here in Lynchwood, I mean in Sanctuary, and Liar's Berg... just, Pandora in general. I don't even remember when the reality struck me of what Deathtrap did to Marcie. I always thought that the heat would die down, and that I'd be able to find my parents again, and we could all start over. I mean, maybe we'd have to get new identities and go to the fringe systems and I'd have to cut and bleach my hair, but...

She sighs and rests her right cheek on her palm. "I had this vid of myself with my parents that I'd always look at before I fell asleep. It was this awful holiday greeting gram that Mom made us take to send to our relatives all over the galaxy." She glances down at the wood grain of the bar and chuckles. "Dad's wearing one of his tacky sweatervests and they had us sing this _stupid_ song for it, but... it was comforting. It was... the one normal thing I had left. It was _us_. So I looked at it every night, to remind myself of what I was fighting for. To remind myself that... this was only temporary. That I'd get to see them again. That, in spite of all the shit that had happened to me, there could still be a happy ending to all of this.

"But one night... the gram changed. It wasn't comforting anymore. I mean, there was my mom and my dad, looking as happy as ever, and I just looked so out of place with them. And it wasn't that my smile was forced, or my singing was off-pitch, I just... it was like I was looking into somebody _else's_ life. I wasn't that girl with the snowflake painted on her cheek anymore. Then whenever I thought of being able to find them again, I wouldn't smile. I wouldn't laugh, or feel all warm and fuzzy inside, I just... all I thought was, if I couldn't even recognize myself, how could they? After everything I've-... after everything this planet has made me do... How could I hug my mother with these hands? How could I ever look my dad in the eye?

"It wasn't a motivation to keep going anymore. It was mocking me. Showing me what I would never have again."

A heavy silence hangs over the both of them. Slowly, Gaige looks over at the Sheriff, her orange eyes focused on her, soft and engrossed with attention.

"When I looked into Dr. Samuels's eyes earlier," Gaige says, her voice dropping in tone and volume, "just before she left? _That_ is what I saw. _Fear_. That everything she had done, everything she had to sacrifice wouldn't even matter if she couldn't look at her wife without being reminded of exactly what she had to do just to see her again."

Her eyes flicker downward, but the Sheriff's gaze keeps burning on the side of her neck.

"Or even worse... that her wife wouldn't be able to look at _her_ the same way. That she wouldn't understand the only reason she did those things was because she was hanging on to the one good thing she had left in this screwed-up universe."

Gaige bows her head and shuts her eyes, cradling her forehead in her palms.

Beside her, the Sheriff lets out a barely-audible sigh.

"I don't think you did the right thing," the brunette says. Her orange eyes trail over the grain of the bar, up the length of Gaige's metal arm, until they reach her bright green eyes. "...because I don't think there is a right or a wrong here. But you stood up to me for what you believe in."

She keeps her eyes locked onto Gaige's as her fingers find the rim of her glass.

"That's gotta count for somethin'."

The Sheriff goes to finish the rest of her drink. Gaige doesn't stop her this time, but blurts out the first question to come to mind.

"Is that why didn't you execute me?"

The brunette pauses as the glass touches her lips. After a long silence, she sucks the rest of the whiskey back and sets the glass down in front of her. "How many people have you killed? And I mean _you_. Not your robot."

Gaige looks down, avoiding her stare. "I- I try not to..." She bites her bottom lip and swallows back that lie. "I don't know. I lost count."

The Sheriff waits until Gaige looks back up at her. "Have you ever killed someone who didn't deserve it?"

She closes her eyes and nods. The windswept black hair and electric blue eyes are just as clear to her now as they ever were. "Just one. We-... _I_ had to."

The Sheriff nods, then looks back down at the empty glass in front of her. "There's your answer."

Gaige studies the Sheriff's orange eyes gazing down at the grain of the wooden bar top, the sheen of her hair in the dim lights overhead, the strong line of her jaw. Frowning, she looks down at her own mismatched hands. "That's not much of an answer," she mumbles.

The Sheriff looks back over at her. "Do you think it's a mistake that you're alive today? That you've survived for this long?"

Gaige opens her mouth to speak, then bites her lip.

"The day before you came here, you were worried about a damn _science fair_. You said yourself you'd never fired a gun before in your life. But you're still alive. After all the shit this planet has thrown at you, you're _still alive_. You're a lot stronger than you give yourself credit for. Probably than _anybody_ gives you credit for."

Gaige glances down, then nods. She's made it this far. Pandora has dragged her to hell and back. But she's still breathing, and still fighting for everyone who can't. She can keep going. She needs to.

"You didn't ask me my name."

The sound of the Sheriff's voice, touched with curiosity, snaps Gaige from her thoughts. She looks over at the brunette and offers a lopsided grin. "I guess I figured you would tell me that on your own."

The Sheriff smirks at her from under heavy-lidded eyes. "Hm."

Gaige chuckles. "Nah, that's right, I forgot. Big bad Josie Wales can't have her subordinates getting too friendly with her."

The brunette just raises an eyebrow, then turns to look at the other patrons again.

Gaige frowns, until she notices the Sheriff's hat resting on the bar between them. She picks it up and puts it on, then smiles at her reflection in the mirror on the wall opposite her.

"Whaddaya think?" she asks, turning to face the Sheriff, an amused grin still painted on her lips.

She glances back over at the redhead, then chuckles. "I think you're even drunker than you look if you say that works on you."

"Doesn't really sit right on the pigtails." She takes it off to remove the clamps from her hair. After shaking her red locks free, she tries the hat back on. "Huh? Huh?"

The Sheriff looks at her for a moment, then reaches over and tips the brim down over Gaige's eyes. "Purple suits you."

Gaige chuckles and pushes the brim back up to look at the brunette. "Hey, before I forget. I just wanted to say thanks. For letting Dr. Samuels go. I know you didn't have to, but..." She sighs. "She didn't deserve what happened to her."

"Yeah," she says, glancing down at her fingerless gloves. "Let's just hope I don't come to regret that decision."

"You don't think she deserves a second chance?"

"I don't much believe in those," the Sheriff says, dispassionately. "Present company excluded."

Gaige chuckles, then shakes her head. "I dunno. I'm still not buying that 'you didn't deserve to die' story."

The Sheriff glances over at her. "Hmm. I guess there might've been one other thing," she says, lips curling into a grin.

Gaige straightens up and raises her eyebrows. "Yeah? What?"

The Sheriff turns her gaze from Gaige's eyes to the hat on top of her head. "Maybe I've got a soft spot for people who remind me of me."

She looks back into the Sheriff's eyes for a moment, mouth hanging slightly open, before she bursts out laughing. "Now _that's_ funny!"

Biting her bottom lip, the Sheriff takes her hat back. Without saying another word, she gets to her feet.

"You and me?" Gaige says, looking up at her. "We're _nothing_ alike."

Gaige glances at her right shoulder as the Sheriff's hand comes to rest on it. The brunette's voice rolls gently into her left ear. "I'm not so convinced."

The Sheriff raises her eyebrows at Gaige. She starts walking towards the exit, and Gaige clears her throat when her hand touches the door.

"Hey, Sheriff Kaplan?"

She stops and turns around, leaning back against the wall beside the door.

"Thanks. For listening to my ramblings." She bites her bottom lip, then grins weakly.

The Sheriff smirks. She pulls the door open, pausing as she steps over the threshold. She glances over her shoulder and says, "Nisha."

Nisha winks at her and walks out. Gaige slowly turns back to the bar, repeating her name under her breath.

* * *

"Dr. Samuels? I'm here to take you to the station. The, uh, train station, not the... police station."

Gaige knocks on the door to room 113 again, feeling the rattling of the door reverberating across the inside of her forehead. She should've stopped about two drinks earlier last night.

No answer. Gaige frowns and checks her ECHO. The next train to the spaceport is due to leave in just half an hour. Unless she caught the one that left three hours ago...

Again, she knocks. Again, no answer. She gulps, her mouth feeling dry. Her stomach churns.

The door is still locked. "Dr. Samuels?"

She presses her ear to the door, listening for the running water of the shower. She only hears the rush of blood through her own head.

She ECHOs the owner, Fillion. Just as she feared, the guest in 113 hadn't checked out. She runs a hand through her hair and paces.

There was a time when she would've believed there could be a rational explanation for this, but she's been on Pandora too long to know that's the case.

She slams her metal shoulder into the door, breaking the frame and flinging it open.

The blanket is dragged halfway off the bed, towards the open window. On the floor, next to the overturned nightstand, is a small storage deck and a train ticket-card. On the windowsill, a few droplets of blood.

Her ECHO device crackles in her ear, followed by the Sheriff's voice. "Hey-"

"Samuels is gone," Gaige interrupts her, taking long strides towards the bathroom to check for any other evidence. "There was a struggle."

"I-"

"Get everybody down here. I'm gonna go ask Fillion if he heard anything since she checked in." She takes in a few short, rapid breaths. "That was only about eight hours ago so, so if we hurry, we might-"

"Gaige."

The shock of hearing her name in the Sheriff's resigned voice stops Gaige in her tracks.

"You need to get to the train station."

* * *

Gaige looks down through narrowed eyes at the deceased Dr. Samuels.

Her body lies face-up at the foot of the stairs leading into the train station, limbs splayed. She's dressed in a burgundy shirt – though it might have been another color at some point – and blood-stained tan pants. Different clothes from what Gaige saw her in last. She's not sure how to feel about that.

She glances to her left and sees the Sheriff talking to a short blonde woman with a pixie cut. She slowly walks over to them, throwing her arms out to the sides for balance to compensate for her wobbling knees.

The blonde woman gives her a curious look. "Are you feeling alright?"

She closes her eyes. "Fine. Uh...?"

"Hughes, Gaige Davenport," the Sheriff says, pointing from one of them to the other. "Gaige, Dr. Gwendolyn Hughes. Medical examiner."

Gaige puts a hand to her forehead and nods, eyes still squeezed shut. "Right, right."

Dr. Hughes clears her throat. "I was just telling your Sheriff here that it doesn't look like your killer particularly knew what he was doing. There's fourteen stab wounds, but... you're sure you're alright?"

Gaige opens her eyes and nods. "Fine. You were saying?"

Hughes runs a hand over her chin. "It looks like your killer didn't try to avoid any of the major arteries. One of the attacks pierced the victim's aorta-"

"Dr. _Samuels_," Gaige says, her jaw clenched.

She pauses, then clears her throat. "Dr. Samuels would have bled out in minutes."

The Sheriff purses her lips together as she watches Dr. Hughes's young assistant examine Samuels. "So a confident killer would've either gone straight for the heart, or kept her alive as long as possible. And he didn't do either."

"It's consistent with the hesitation wounds I found on her arms," Hughes says, folding her arms over her chest.

The Sheriff mirrors the medical examiner's posture. She glances over at the doctor, when the young assistant speaks up. "Dr. Hughes? There's something on her back."

Hughes uncrosses her arms and walks over. "What've you got, Martinsen?"

The Sheriff takes a few steps towards Samuels. Gaige opts to stand back. They both watch curiously as Martinsen and Hughes roll Samuels onto her side. Hughes snaps on a latex glove, then grabs the hem of Samuels's bloodied shirt and rolls it up. In capital letters about one finger tall, the word "MONSTER" is carved into her skin.

Gaige turns away, covering her mouth with her hand. She winces and swallows back the wave of revulsion rushing up the back of her throat.

Martinsen's baritone breaks the silence. "No signs of arterial bleeding, no clotting, wounds aren't swollen..."

"Meaning what, exactly?" the Sheriff asks, her tone sharp and impatient.

"They're, uh-" He clears his throat. "They were made post-mortem," he says in a wobbly voice.

Gaige takes a deep breath. She sees the Sheriff's shadow approaching before the brunette reaches her.

"I'm fine," she says, before Nisha can say anything.

Gaige looks up at her and nods. Hughes and Martinsen have rolled Samuels face-up again. She looks away again once her eyes start stinging from the tears welling up.

"You _sure_ about that?" Nisha says, tilting her head to the side.

Gaige gulps, then nods again. "Right now I just wanna catch the sick sonofabitch who did this," she says, breathlessly.

Nisha bites her bottom lip, then nods. "Good."

She looks past the Sheriff's shoulder as Martinsen comes walking briskly over towards them, scratching at his head of short brown hair. "Uh, excuse me..."

The Sheriff glances over, then turns around, standing shoulder to shoulder with Gaige. "You got somethin' for me?"

He glances over his shoulder, then up at the Sheriff. "Dr. Hughes just found some skin under her fingernails. Looks like she got a piece of whoever was attacking her. We can run it against the databases, but it'll be a while."

"Yeah, yeah," she says, waving a dismissive hand in his direction. "I know."

Gaige keeps her eyes fixed on Dr. Samuels until she feels Martinsen's eyes on her. When she looks up at him, he smiles weakly.

The Sheriff glowers at him. "You find something amusing about the murder victim lying behind you?"

He glances up at her, then quickly averts his eyes. "Uh, n- no, ma'am."

"Then wipe that stupid fucking grin off your face before I do it for you."

Martinsen gulps and looks down at the ground. Behind him, Dr. Hughes calls out. "Mart, go get a body bag."

"Oh thank you," he mutters under his breath as he hurriedly retreats from the scowling Sheriff.

Gaige raises an eyebrow at the Sheriff. She just shakes her head, staring him down all the while. "I don't like him."

She runs her metal hand through her hair and turns to face down Main Street. "I just don't... I don't get- hah-"

Gaige starts gasping for air, her chest heaving against her vest, which suddenly feels like it's made of wrought-iron. Her neck and the back of her head start burning, and her palm breaks out in a sweat. She tugs at her collar, then starts unbuttoning her denim vest and tries to yank it off.

"Hey, hey," Nisha says, putting an arm around her waist and guiding her away from the crime scene. "You're alright. Here, sit down. Catch your breath."

Gaige doesn't so much sit as collapse onto the stairs beneath her, her rubbery legs unable to support her anymore. She peels her vest off and uses it to mop the sweat off her face. "This... this was my fault."

The Sheriff slowly steps down into the dirt in front of her, then narrows her eyes at her. "Excuse me?"

"I'm the one who convinced you to let her go. I told her to stay the night here." Gaige lifts her head up to stare blankly down the street. "She died because of me."

The Sheriff folds her arms over her chest. "That a confession? Maybe you wanna tell me if she begged you to stop when you plunged the knife into her-"

"Shut up," Gaige spits, clamping her palms down over her ears. "That's not what I meant, and you _know_ it."

"You get one thing straight," Nisha says, jabbing her index finger down at the redhead. "What happened to her? You had _nothing_ to do with that."

Gaige grits her teeth and looks up at the Sheriff as a tear slips out of her eye and rolls down the side of her nose. "I was sleeping off the drinks from the bar while some sick bastard stabbed her to death!"

"So was I! That doesn't mean I'm just as responsible as the piece of shit holding the knife!"

She shakes her head. "You said _yourself_ that there'd be a lynch mob if people found out she was here. I- I should've been in that room with her. Protecting her from- from _this_!"

"You had no way of knowing something like this would happen! You did everything you could-"

"No." Dropping her chin to her chest, Gaige rests her elbows on her knees and runs her fingers through her hair. "I could've done more. I _should've_ done more."

Nisha sighs. "You can't save everyone," she says, her tone dropping. "You better accept that now, because if you start goin' down that road, you'll blow your brains out from the guilt."

Gaige buries her face in her palms. "Dammit!" Her voice breaks.

"Talk to me." the Sheriff says, crouching down in front of her. "What are you thinking?"

She breathes in slowly through her nose, then lets it out through her mouth. She rubs her eyes. "I'm sick to my stomach. And I can't tell if it's because she's dead, or because of _how_ she died, or because I feel bad that she died even though she..."

Her words die in her throat as Nisha narrows her eyes at her. Gaige runs her hands down over her face.

"Who could've done this?"

* * *

Winger presses a button on his ECHO, and the screens on Gaige and Nisha's devices both light up. "Well," he says, "here's everybody who had family who died at the Wildlife Preserve."

Gaige's heart sinks into her stomach as she collapses back into an empty chair. "Thirty-seven people?" she says, putting a hand to her chest. "How many people even _live_ here?"

"Couple hundred," the Sheriff says, disinterestedly.

"Lynchwood's lucky it's got the mines," Winger says, not glancing up from his holographic ECHO screen. "Hyperion took a lot more for testing from other towns. Sometimes entire encampments."

Gaige gulps, flicking through the list of names. Thirty-seven lives forever altered, thirty-seven families destroyed with merciless efficiency. And this is just one town. How many "test subjects" did Hyperion have? Hundreds? Thousands?

"What exactly are we lookin' for?" Winger says, glancing up at the Sheriff. "There's a few on here that are on the wanted list too, but we can't exactly go off of previous arrests."

"Not for here," she says, glancing up at him. "But a lot of folks here came from New Haven and Sarana..."

As the Sheriff and Winger talk, a name near the bottom of the list catches Gaige's eye. She opens the profile, and is greeted by a man's face, with deep brown hair and heavy eyebrows. "He's on the wanted list," Gaige says, looking up at the Sheriff. "For assault, right?"

"Yeah, Heck Glanton," Winger says. He rolls up his left sleeve. "I was on patrol out by the grinders a few months back. He was getting into it with one of the other miners, so I went to see what the problem was. Glanton takes one look at me, and he loses it. Came at me with a knife, knocked me off my skag mount, stabbed it right through the eye. I was trying to subdue him, get him to calm down, when he gave me this."

Gaige's lip curls as she looks at the long red scar near Winger's elbow.

"He ran," the Sheriff says, "so I went lookin' for him. Never found anything."

"If he's smart, he left town," Winger says, rolling his sleeve back down.

"Maybe he came back," the Sheriff says. "Or never left. There's lots of abandoned and condemned mines he could've been hiding in. He could've made it in with the rats. Who knows."

Gaige frowns, cross-checking the people with family who died in the Preserve with the names on the wanted list. Only two names pop up: James Thompson and Slim Burton. "Wait, what family did Glanton have that Hyperion captured?"

Winger shakes his head. "He's on the list because he was _in_ the Preserve. He's the only one in Lynchwood who was there. At least, the only one who came back alive."

"Part of the big group that escaped a few months back," Nisha says, looking over his file. "And it's not exactly easy to keep somethin like that under the radar."

Gaige stares at Glanton's picture, at his tired, sunken eyes, at his stubbly jaw. After a while, she realizes the label at the bottom says "test subject #817". It's not a mugshot, but a picture taken at the Preserve. Her stomach turns. "You think... _he_ killed Dr. Samuels?"

The Sheriff exhales slowly. "Hell, you saw her. Whoever did it tried to make her suffer. And 'monster' carved into her back? This was _personal_. Who would want to see her dead more than somebody she ran through those experiments?"

Winger lets out a despondent sigh. "If anybody would be tempted to call her a monster..."

The Sheriff frowns, then shakes her head. "I still don't get that. Why go to the trouble of carving that into her skin, then pull her shirt down over it and lay her on her back so nobody can see it?"

At a loss, Winger shakes his head. "Maybe he only wanted us to see."

Gaige buries her face into her palms. "Dammit," she mutters, her eyes watering up again. She peeks through the gaps between her fingers into Nisha's stern eyes. "Are you really going to hunt down somebody that's been through that hell?"

Nisha stares back at her. "Would you rather leave somebody capable of _that_ out on the streets?"

After wiping the tears from her cheeks, Gaige grimly shakes her head.

* * *

It's eerie just how quiet Main Street gets during these long nights. Barely any foot traffic, the only lights coming from the bar right beside the tracks.

She startles at every squeak of an opening dumpster, jumps at every grinding of sand underneath a boot. There's more life in the shadows than there is in the street. The rats scurry between buildings, scrounging up what food and trash they find useful. They stay behind buildings, giving Gaige a wide berth. They must have learned to associate her with Dukino.

She can't help but be reminded of Krieg. Of the nights when she would wake up to him screaming at the top of his lungs. What the Sheriff had said about Samuels haunts her: maybe Hyperion's ultimate punishment for him was making him live with what had happened.

The worst feeling she's ever had was when she got to the Control Core, and realized there was nothing she could do to save Angel. The way her stomach is churning and twisting now reminds her too much of that helplessness.

Stirring her from her thoughts, something rustles behind a dumpster on the other side of the tracks. Her hand goes to the grip of the shotgun resting on her back. It's not a rat: they wouldn't be lurking anywhere near a street light.

A man with wild, straggly brown hair peers out from the shadows. Despite the beard he's grown, she recognizes him instantly from the heavy, low-set eyebrows.

She trains her shotgun on him, keeping her index finger parallel to the trigger guard. "Heck Glanton! Come out where I can see you!"

His head snaps over to where she's standing. One of the streetlights reflects off something in his hand. She takes a step closer, shotgun aimed at center mass. She isn't sure she could land a solid shot from this distance, and the old Jakobs in her hand can only fire once before it needs to be reloaded. She eyes the knife in his right hand, the blade coated in blood. She's willing to bet the contents of her storage deck unit that they'd get a match if they ran it against Samuels.

"Drop the knife, Glanton!" As she gives the order, her voice shakes.

He stares back at her with wide, unblinking eyes. He mutters something under his breath, but she can't make out what.

He slowly stands up and steps out of the shadows. Gaige's jaw drops. From his neck down to his knees, he is covered in dried blood. On the side of his neck, going down to the hollow of his collarbone, are four long, red gashes. Scratch marks.

The street swims before her eyes as she feels the blood rushing out of her face. She squeezes her eyes shut and takes a few deep breaths. Once her legs stop shaking, she opens her eyes and takes a step closer, tucking her finger inside the trigger guard. "I said drop the knife!"

"Drop it," he whispers. "Drop it." He makes no effort to take cover behind the dumpster.

"I'm not dropping anything," she says, trying to keep her voice from breaking. "You need to put down that knife and come with me."

"Can't do it." He shakes his head. "Can't do it, can't do it, they smell it, they _smell_ the fear on you."

Gaige narrows her eyes as Glanton runs his empty hand through his hair. The knot in her stomach twists a little harder.

"You stop killing and you go back _there_. Don't you _understand_?" He bows his head and squeezes a fistful of hair. "It doesn't stop. It doesn't _stop!_ They don't let it."

He shakes his head as she clears her throat. "Glanton, it's over. You killed a woman!"

"No, no... I didn't, I... I wouldn't!" He points the blade of the knife at her, then looks back down at the ground, head darting this way and that. "LIARS!"

She shuts her eyes and clamps her jaw shut. "You stabbed her fourteen times!" she says, through grit teeth.

Glanton doubles over and puts his palm to his forehead. After a moment, the gentle whisper of the wind is drowned out when he lets out an anguished, incoherent scream.

"They don't _stop_ until they _bleed_!" He lets out another loud, quavering groan. "They _told_ me! They _promised_!"

Gaige's white-knuckled grip on the handle of her shotgun relaxes. Glanton slowly straightens up and looks into her eyes for the first time. Even in the night, his pupils are constricted to pinpoints in the middle of his silvery-blue eyes.

"All of us." He flashes a terrified grin and shakes his head. "We're all monsters now."

Monsters. Her stomach sinks, the word flashing in deep red letters in front of her eyes. Was the "monster" meant as a label for Dr. Samuels? Or was it just letting them know who was responsible?

Gaige focuses back on Glanton as he squeezes his eyes shut and bares his teeth. She sighs, then slowly holsters her shotgun.

"Don't make me fight anymore," he stammers. He hits the heel of his palm to his forehead repeatedly. "No. No. No!"

She takes a slow step closer to the tracks. "You don't have to fight," she says, watching him turn over the bloodied knife in his hands. "It's over."

"Drop it, Glanton!"

Gaige's heart skips a few beats at the sound of the Sheriff's voice behind her. Son of a bitch, that woman could _glide_.

The Sheriff shoots her a reproachful look that says _we'll talk about this later_ before turning back to the man standing on the other side of the tracks.

He drops to his knees, knife still clutched in white-knuckled fingers. "I'm sorry," he sobs. "I didn't want to!"

The Sheriff keeps her Jakobs revolver trained on him. "Drop the knife," she says, in a stentorian tone.

"Hyperion can't hurt you anymore!" Gaige says. "You don't have to hurt anybody else!"

He stabs at the dirt with the knife and screams through grit teeth. Gaige casts a look over at Nisha; the brunette's orange eyes stay locked onto Glanton, a look of fierce determination in them.

"You aren't seriously considering taking him _in_, are you?" Gaige says, looking over at the Sheriff. "I mean, _look_ at him!"

"You _saw_ what he did to her!" The Sheriff keeps her focus on Glanton as he squeezes his eyes shut. "He _mutilated_ her! You were the one who said you wanted to catch him!"

"I didn't expect _this_!" she says, as Glanton looks at his reflection in the knife blade.

The Sheriff shoots an angry glare over at her. "He's a _threat_ to everyone around him!"

Gaige clenches her jaw and takes a few steps closer to her. "You can't just _shoot_ him!"

Nisha is about to respond when the sound of Glanton's voice interrupts her. "It'll never be over." His glossy eyes sparkle in the moonlight, and a tear tracks down his dirty cheek. "But I can stop you."

Gaige and Nisha both look at him, and then each other, uncertainly. The Sheriff looks back down the barrel of her revolver at him.

He squeezes his eyes shut and clenches his jaw. "No. No! I won't let you make me!"

Glanton throws his head back and howls, the veins in his forehead and neck bulging against sweaty skin. He slams his hands down into the dirt, kicking up small clouds of dust, then springs to his feet and rushes towards them. The Sheriff takes aim, but as she fires, Gaige pushes her arms up and to the side, sending the shot wide.

From their right comes the scream of a train.

"Glanton, NO!"

Gaige dashes towards him, but Nisha catches her around the waist. She closes her eyes and drops to her knees as a wet and heavy thud is abruptly drowned out by the indifferent roar of the train as it rushes past.

* * *

Gaige barely registers Nisha shouting at her to get in her office as she makes her way through the nearly-empty police station. The door to the Sheriff's office rattles shut behind her. She walks past the cherrywood desk, up to the window in the opposite wall. Nisha grabs her by the shoulder and spins her around.

"What the _fuck_ were you thinking?!"

Gaige blinks, her mouth slightly agape.

"You were about to throw yourself in front of a train! Were you _thinking_ at all?!"

"I..." Her throat suddenly seems dry. "I thought I could... help..."

"Help? _Help_?!" She steps forward. "How exactly did you plan on doing that?"

"I don't know!" Gaige says, stepping back and raising her voice. "You saw him! That place destroyed him! You pointing your gun at his face sure wasn't helping!"

"And _you_ saw what he did to Samuels!" Nisha jabs a finger at her chest. "Do you want that to happen to you?"

Gaige glares up into Nisha's eyes. "Of course not!"

"Then why the hell did you confront him alone?"

She grits her teeth. "I'm not a kid! I can take care of myself!"

"He could've ambushed you!" Nisha takes another step forward.

Gaige steps back and leans into the wall. "I had everything under control! I had Deathtrap ready!"

"And that did you a damn lot of good against Silvestri!"

Gaige's jaw drops in indignation as the Sheriff's words punch the air out of her lungs. "You... that was different!"

"Yeah, I guess it was." Nisha's voice drops to a menacing whisper. She leans in until their faces are barely more than an inch apart. "At least with Silvestri, you weren't _trying_ to get yourself killed."

"That's not fair!" Gaige shoves Nisha's left shoulder, then steps forward to close the distance between them. "I _had_ to try and save him! Why don't you understand that?! I HAD to!"

Gaige shuts her eyes and lets out a wavering groan through clenched teeth. Nisha starts to say something, but Gaige interrupts her.

"And what the hell does it even _matter_ to y-"

Nisha cuts her off with a fierce, open-mouthed kiss. Two fingerless-gloved hands find their way firmly onto Gaige's cheeks as Nisha's body presses into hers. After a few passionate seconds, she pulls apart, leaving Gaige out of breath and struggling to keep herself standing.

"Just because _you_ don't care whether you live or die," Nisha whispers, an almost angry glint in her fiery eyes, "doesn't mean nobody else does."

For a brief moment, Gaige stares up at her, mouth hanging open. Then, without thinking, she does the first thing that comes naturally.

She kisses her back.


	4. Of Men and Monsters

Everything seems to change in those few seconds their lips touch. Gaige's lips smack as she pulls apart from Nisha and stares into her orange eyes. There's a glimmer, an ember behind them, and right now, she wants nothing more than to ignite it, to feel it burning into her soul.

She stands up on tiptoes, places her hands on her cheeks, and kisses her again, more forcefully this time, relishing her apricot lips. Nisha deepens their kiss as Gaige takes off her hat and tosses it onto the back of the chair behind the desk. She plunges her fingers slowly through her thick chocolate hair. A lock gets caught between the metal joints. Nisha winces and lets out a little groan.

"Sorry sorry," Gaige whispers between kisses, guiding her metal hand to the small of Nisha's back.

Her hands sliding down Gaige's sides and onto her hips, Nisha leans in and hisses, "_Shut up._"

Gaige's back arches as Nisha's teeth graze against her earlobe, tugging on the sensitive skin. She leans her head to the side, moaning as Nisha's mouth works down hungrily along her neck.

She takes a handful of her brown hair in her right hand and breathes it in, losing herself in the spicy, lively, full-bodied wood aroma of burning incense. Gasping, she guides Nisha's mouth back to her own, hungry, ravenous for the savory smack of her lips, her insatiable tongue.

Nisha walks Gaige backwards until her back rests against the wall, then presses herself against her. She bites and tugs at Gaige's lower lip, eliciting breathy little whimpers.

Gaige lifts her left knee, sliding her leg up along Nisha's and hooking it around her waist. Nisha moves her hand to the back of Gaige's thigh, then slides it up along her legging. An excited squeal spills out of Gaige's lips as Nisha grabs and squeezes her ass.

Someone knocks at the door three times, like a cold, invisible hand slapping her across the face. Gaige feels the muscles in Nisha's back tense up as she pulls away. She closes her eyes lets her hands drop to her sides.

Gaige turns and faces the window, trying to catch her breath. She wipes her mouth as the door squeaks open. She dimly recognizes Winger's voice over the buzzing sound in her head.

Her breathing is slow and deep, her heart still pounding in her chest. She should be shocked with herself. The Sheriff may have saved Gaige's life twice, and respected her in a way that she always wished the Vault Hunters had, but still, this was the same woman who thought dating Handsome Jack was a good idea. She was at his side when New Haven fell. The woman is bad news.

Yet the only thing Gaige is thinking about is kissing her again. Grabbing those purple lapels and feeling that warm rush of energy shoot down her spine, all the way to her fingers and toes.

"Gaige?"

She blinks, grasping desperately in the dark for the snippets of conversation she'd overheard. She turns around. Winger is gone, and Nisha is standing in the door. "Wha?"

Nisha glances to the side, an impatient twitch to her lips. "Banks didn't report back from patrol. We're gonna check it out."

Gaige blinks. "Officer Robb? Did something happen?" She shakes her head. Stupid question: if she knew, she wouldn't be checking it out. "I mean, do you need help?"

Nisha purses her lips together. "Right now, I need you to get some sleep. You're not gonna be any use to me out there if your head isn't clear."

Sleep. Sleep sounds good, but she can't help but feel guilty if someone might be in danger and she's not helping find them. "You sure? I could-"

"If it helps..." Nisha reaches into her pocket, then tosses a small hunk of metal at Gaige. "That's an order."

Reflexively, her left arm snaps up and catches it. The Sheriff walks out as Gaige looks down at the gold, six-armed star badge resting in her palm.

* * *

After Gaige walks into the Sheriff's office the next morning, a silent giggle bursts out of her mouth. Nisha lies on her back on the leather couch against the far wall, purple hat pulled down over her eyes, left arm dangling off the cushion. A holo-map of Lynchwood and its surrounding area hovers above her desk, a few white beacons blinking out in the desert surrounding the town. Her purple coat hangs on the back of her chair, but she's still wearing her boots, propping them up on the armrest.

She walks over to her and lifts up her hat. Nisha's eyes scrunch shut tighter as the sunlight pours in through the window onto her face. "Don't- what-" When she opens her eyes and looks up at Gaige, she bolts upright. "What time is it?"

"Just an hour past dawn," Gaige says, tossing the purple hat back onto Nisha's lap.

"Yeah?" She leans back against the couch and sighs, then cocks an eyebrow at Gaige. "You're here early."

Gaige smirks and pulls the deputy's badge out of her vest pocket. "Thought I was workin' for you now."

"That was just so you'd get your ass to bed. Guess it worked." She rubs her eyes, then points to Gaige's empty hands. "If you're working for me, why didn't you bring me a coffee?"

"Because kiss my ass, that's why," Gaige says, slipping the badge back into her pocket. "And speaking of sleep, you look like shit. What time did you get back?"

Nisha chuckles and flips Gaige off. "'Bout four hours ago," she mumbles. "I'll be fine."

"So _you_ can work on no sleep, just not me." Gaige pops her left hip out. "You don't trust me?"

"Last I checked, I wasn't the one jumping on the tracks."

Gaige walks over to the window and rests her hands on the sill. "You didn't find him, then?"

Nisha lets out a weary sigh. "No luck. Got some guys scouting a few old rat hideaways out there still, but..."

Gaige slowly nods, then glances down at her left arm. She presses her second and third fingers to the tip of her thumb, then raises her hand into the air. Deathtrap whirs and hums into existence, scanning the room for danger.

"I'll download this map to his data suite," Gaige says, activating the ECHO device embedded in her arm, wired to Deathtrap's digistruct processors. "You can tell him where to go from yours. I'm sure he can cover a lot of ground. And handle anything that gets in his way, right?"

Deathtrap holds his right arm out, blocky fingers curled into a fist. Gaige knocks her left fist against it with a metallic clank.

"Get on it," she says, and Deathtrap floats out the door, propulsion engine thrumming.

"I'll take all the help I can get," Nisha mumbles. "But if it's been this long, I really don't think they're gonna find anything. Not anything good, anyway."

Gaige looks out the door for a lingering moment before dropping her gaze to the floor. "Sorry," she mumbles.

Nisha groans. The leather squeals and the floorboards creak as she stands up. "Don't feel sorry for me." She trudges over to her desk, then sinks back into her chair. "His girlfriend's gonna be broken up about it, that's for sure."

Nodding, Gaige raps her knuckles against the wooden windowsill. She takes in a few shallow breaths, her stomach doing flips. "Listen, um... I'm glad to help, of course, but I actually... didn't come here to ask about Robb."

Nisha hums distractedly as she stares at the holo-map.

Gaige turns to face her and wrings her hands together. "What, um... what happened between us last night..."

Nisha's eyes widen slightly. She turns in her chair and looks up at Gaige expectantly.

She gulps. The words _it was a mistake_ bubble behind her lips, but she can't get them out on their own:

"Tell me it was a mistake."

Nisha furrows her eyebrows and leans back in her chair. Her teeth sink into the swell of her bottom lip, and her eyes flicker briefly down to the ground before she takes in a slow breath. "It was a mistake."

Her tone is flat, but not very convincing. Gaige slumps her shoulders and stares down at the floorboards beneath her sneakers. "You don't mean that."

The Sheriff shrugs. "Nope."

Gaige groans. If it was a mistake – and it _was _a mistake, she _knows_ – then why did it feel so damn good?

"Look, I don't mind working with you," she says, turning to face the Sheriff. "I really don't. Cleaning up this town, keeping the rats in check, hunting down thieves and rapists and murderers... I mean I didn't become a Vault Hunter for the money. I wanted to do some good for people. And I get that here, but..." She chuckles and points at Nisha, then herself. "You and me? We... we _can't_ happen."

The Sheriff rests her cheek against her fist, index finger extended and tapping against her temple. "Why not?"

Gaige stammers. "Why not? Because they told me about you! About... what you did!"

She looks her up and down, scrutinizing every detail. "You mean _Brick_ told you about me."

"You were there when New Haven fell." Gaige resumes pacing, anything to avoid those skewering orange eyes right now. "You captured Brick, tortured him..." She stops dead in her tracks and watches her from the corner of her eye. "Strangled his puppy?"

Nisha blinks slowly, watching Gaige with calculated attention. After a moment, she chuckles. "He told you that, did he?"

Gaige drops her chin to her chest and closes her eyes. "I thought... he might've been lying about that. I mean that sounds like something he'd make up just to make somebody sound really evil!" She shakes her head and looks up at the ceiling, right hand rubbing the back of her neck. "I didn't believe you actually..."

Nisha stands up and takes a few slow steps towards the window to her right. "That really any worse than the things you've done?" She looks over her shoulder, her sharp features profiled by the early morning sun. "Executing unarmed people? Burning people alive in their sleep?"

Gaige closes her eyes. Her tongue drags like rough sandpaper against the roof of her mouth. A lump wedges itself in her throat, like a chunk of unchewed stalker meat.

"Now," Nisha says, turning on her heel and leaning back against the wall, "don't get me wrong. I already told you I'm not mourning the loss of the Hodunks."

Her stomach churning, Gaige falls back onto the leather couch. Her face is cool and clammy with sweat.

Nisha's boots thud slowly and heavily into the ground as she steps in front of the couch. Gaige's eyes slowly track up her pants and her unbuttoned vest, to the contemptuous frown on her face. "But don't you _dare_ stand there and act like you're somehow superior."

Gaige gulps and nods, meekly, dropping her gaze back down to the purple boots in front of her. "Point taken," she croaks.

"Did Brick ever tell you what he did _after_ he broke out of my jail?"

She shakes her head.

Nisha chuckles. "I'm not surprised. He spent all his time tracking down Shep Sanders. Sanders offered Hyperion info on the Crimson Raider resistance in exchange for asylum for him and his family."

A black pit settles at the back of Gaige's stomach. She gets the distinct impression that she already knows where this story is headed.

"Brick finally found him a few days before they were supposed to leave. Dragged him back to Sanctuary, threw him to the ground in front of the gates, demanded that he confess to what he'd done." Nisha's voice grows taut. "Once he did, Brick drove his thumbs into his eye sockets and crushed his skull like an overripe melon. Nobody tried to stop him. As I understand it, Roland wasn't even in the city at the time. Exiled Brick as soon as he found out what happened."

Gaige clenches her jaw and gulps hard.

"Nobody's hands are clean. You'd do well to remember that."

Nisha slowly walks back to her desk and sits back in her chair. Gaige tugs at the collar of her shirt and unbuttons her vest. She takes a few breaths, then looks over at the Sheriff. "Look. I get it. We've all had to do horrible things in our time here." She wets her lips with her tongue and gulps. "You gave me a second chance, so I gave you one. It's only fair. And we've gotten on fine. But... maybe it would be best if we just... pretend last night never happened."

The Sheriff chews her bottom lip, then shrugs. "If you say so."

Gaige lets out a relieved sigh. "Good. I don't think we'll have a problem, then."

She pushes herself to her feet. Her knees wobble for a moment, but she steadies herself when she reaches for the armrest of the couch.

It could have gone worse.

She makes her way to the office door. As she steps over the threshold, Nisha speaks up, her tone casual and disinterested. "Brick swore revenge on me."

Gaige rolls her eyes and glances over her shoulder. "So what?"

Nisha rests her elbows on her desk and clasps her hands together. "I expect I'll see him again before long. Unless he sends the others to do his fighting for him," she says, glancing briefly off to the side.

Narrowing her eyes, Gaige turns to face the Sheriff and leans her shoulder into the door frame.

"That's not really what concerns me, though," she says, her voice slow and deliberate, every word being carefully chosen. "You know what he did to poor Shep."

The hairs on the back of Gaige's neck stand on end. She glances to the side, Nisha's gaze suddenly too fiery for her to maintain eye contact.

"I just wonder... what he would do if he came down here... and found _you_."

Her breathing shallows, the weight of the question bearing down on her shoulders.

A blue blip pops up on the holo-map hovering over Nisha's desk. She hums quietly to herself, then stands up and grabs her coat off the back of her chair. "Looks like Banks is back on the grid."

No. Whatever happened between the Sheriff and Brick... that was between them. Brick was a big teddy bear at heart. He wouldn't hurt her just for coming to Lynchwood... would he?

"I'll catch up to you later." Nisha's hand claps her on the shoulder as she breezes by. Gaige stands rooted to the spot.

_Brick wouldn't hurt me_. With the image of the mountain of a man crushing another man's skull with his bare hands, it sounds more like famous last words than a reassuring affirmation.

Who is she to say Brick wouldn't? The way he had been shouting about it way back when they first headed to Thousand Cuts to recruit him... _You wanna treat me like a bandit, that's EXACTLY what I'm gonna be!_

She closes her eyes, trying to block out the gnawing feeling of dread at the back of her head. Roland had been worried about him enough to kick him out of the Crimson Raiders. That was no mistake.

She needs to get out and blow some stuff up.

* * *

Gaige squints into the mid-afternoon sunlight. Every sand dune, every exposed boulder, every prickly bramblebush looks exactly the same. Dukino plods through the dirt beside her, sniffing at the air every now and then, on high alert for any whiff of a potential meal.

If there are any spiderants out here, they don't seem too intent on digging their way out of the sand. As heavy as the solar rays weigh on her shoulders, she can't blame them. She tugs at the collar of her shirt, then shades her eyes with her hand. She could really use a hat.

There's nothing out here. Nothing worth wasting her time over. "C'mon, boy," she says, turning on her heel. "Let's go home."

A scream rips through the air. Gaige perks up, trying to locate the sound as she scans the horizon. She climbs to the top of a nearby sand dune, then spots a shaded ridge to the southwest. She breaks off for it in a sprint. Dukino bounds behind her as the screaming grows louder. She pushes her legs as fast as they'll carry her, the midday heat bearing down heavily on her shoulders.

"Somebody help me!"

The ridge in the sand leads down a narrow canyon, at the end of which sits a cave leading into the rock, no doubt dug out by skags. Not wanting to risk her own armored companion, she leads Dukino around the side of the cave and has him wait in the shade of the rock bluff.

Her heart beating in her chest, she pauses by the entrance of the cave, still trying to catch her breath.

"Can anyone hear me?!"

The cries echo through the dark tunnel. It's definitely a woman's voice. Apparently out here on her own, too. Or maybe left out to die.

Gaige draws her shotgun. Can't be too careful.

She stalks into the dark mouth of the cave, her shallow breaths the only sound in between the woman's desperate, frustrated shouts. She holds her right arm out to the side, keeping her fingertips rolling over the rugged rock wall. Her heart beats in her throat. With every twist of the tunnel, she expects an ambush.

The tunnel starts to grow brighter until it takes a sharp turn into a spacious cavern. Sunlight pours in through a long crack in the rock above, too narrow for any person or skag to fall through. At the near end of the chamber sits a woman dressed in dark brown pants, a black tank top, and black work boots. She looks over at Gaige, and her eyes immediately lock onto the shotgun in her left hand.

Clamped onto the woman's left ankle are the sharp teeth of a rusted skag trap. Gaige winces.

"I- I don't want any trouble," the woman stammers. Gaige furrows her brows, then follows the woman's blue eyes to the Jakobs in her left hand.

"Oh- no, that's just – I heard screaming." She takes a closer look at the woman. No holsters, digistruct or physical. If she has any weapons, they're inconspicuously placed. Gaige's stomach churns. She's not sure she can trust her, but she can't very well leave her here, on her own, possibly defenseless. "Are you okay?" She slings the shotgun over her back and kneels across from her, on the other side of the trap.

"Hurts like a bitch," she mumbles, slapping uselessly at the hinged metal jaws.

"Here." Gaige presses her hand down on the release lever, then carefully pries the trap open.

"Thank the stars you showed up," she says, pulling her leg free and rubbing vigorously at her boot where the teeth sank in. "You actually know how to work one of those."

Gaige smirks. She lets the trap snap closed and lays it harmlessly in the dirt. "I had an old friend who's big into hunting. He taught me a few things."

The woman unlaces her boot and slips it off, then pulls up her pant leg to look at the thick red lines on her ankle. Gaige glances around at the sparse, dried-out skag piles, riddled with bone and some strips of old clothes.

"Why were you in here, anyway?" She looks at the dark circles under the woman's blue eyes and frowns. Something about her seems familiar, and she can't place what it is.

"Damn skag attacked me. I fought it off, but it got away with my storage deck. I chased it in here – my first mistake – but it went through that tunnel."

Gaige glances over her shoulder at a narrow tunnel on the far side of the cave. One of them might be able to fit inside it, but it would be tight. Not to mention there's no telling if it gets narrower inside.

"Then I stepped on this damn thing," she says, nudging the inert trap with her boot. "Guess this old den is empty for a reason. I'm just lucky you heard me. Thank you, again, really. I know it's hard to find a decent person on this planet. I'm Rainy, by the way."

"Rainy?" she says, quirking an eyebrow.

Rainy flashes a quirky grin. "Short for Rhiannon. People just called me Rainy 'cause of my blue eyes. Guess it stuck after a while."

"I'm Gaige. And, you're welcome."

"I don't know how to thank you. Truly. I'd offer to pay you, but..." She shrugs and looks over at the small tunnel. "My storage deck..."

She chuckles and pats Rainy on the knee. "It's okay. I'm just glad to help. You know," she says, scooting beside her and looking over at the small black hole in the rock. "If your screaming didn't get that little sucker out of there, there might be an exit on the other side. Could be worth a look? Unless... you want to try crawling in there. Cause I sure don't."

Rainy chuckles. "No thanks." She slides her foot back into her boot and laces it. "Hey, listen... I know what it's like, findin' somebody like this, but... I've been out here for days. I don't suppose you got somewhere I could rest up? Just- for a few hours? Get some sleep and a shower?"

Gaige sighs and looks over at her dirt-smudged face and greasy hair. She knows all too well what it's like out there.

"I know I don't have any money, but..." Rainy clears her throat and looks at Gaige with desperate eyes. "I could find... some way to pay you..."

Gaige furrows her eyebrows. She only realizes what Rainy means when she feels a warm fingertip on her thigh, playing with one of the holes in her legging. "Oh. Oh! No, no, you don't have to-"

"_Have_ to?" Rainy smiles and shakes her head. "It ain't like that. I know how lonely it gets out here, and..." She shrugs and bats her eyelashes. "We're only human."

Gaige glances back down as Rainy's hand flattens out on her thigh and slides up and down. "That's really not necessary," she says, moving her hand firmly away from her leg. "I just don't..."

The tunnel catches her eye again. She snaps her fingers.

"Maybe I could try some skag treats!" she says, reaching into her vest pocket. She fishes around in her pockets, pulling out her badge and a spare makeshift hair clip as she searches for Dukino's peanut-buttery snacks.

Rainy stiffens up. "Well, maybe you're right. It could lead right back outside. We should go check."

"Oh, um..." Deflated, Gaige glances over at her, then nods and stands up. "Okay, yeah. You good to walk?"

After trying to get to her feet, Rainy groans and sits back down. "I dunno." She clears her throat. "I think I sprained my ankle."

"Yeah?" Gaige frowns. "It didn't look too bad. It wasn't even..."

Rainy's eyes burn hard and cold. Gaige feels the blood rush out of her face.

"...swollen..."

She knows now why she looks so familiar. It's amazing what poor lighting and some hair dye can do, but there's no mistaking it: she's seen her face on the wanted posters.

No sooner does her metal hand go for the grip of her shotgun than Rainy snarls and throws a handful of dirt into Gaige's face. She screams out as the dust flies into her eyes, hundreds of tiny insect bites stinging her corneas. Blinded, she staggers away from the tunnel leading back outside, leaning into the wall of the cave for support. She reaches for the canteen on her left hip and pours some water into her right hand. Just as she splashes the water into her eyes, a boot comes down on the back of her right knee, knocking her to the ground.

"What the hell happened?" It's a man's voice, a mixture of alarmed and angry, coming from near the exit tunnel.

Rainy's voice rings out against the cave walls, harsh and husky with rage. "You couldn't warn me she's a damn Sheriff's deputy?!"

"Wh- I didn't know! I-"

Growling, Gaige rolls onto her back and grabs Rainy's right ankle with her left hand, then yanks her off her feet. Rainy yelps and lands on her back. She aims a kick at Gaige's face, but the Mechromancer rolls to the side just before her boot connects.

"What the hell are you doing here, anyway?" Rainy says, throwing another kick at Gaige and missing again. "Run!"

She rolls onto her stomach and gets her first look at the man, about half a foot taller than her, but slight of build. "What the hell are you talking about?" he says, glancing over at Rainy. "She's just a kid, we can take her!"

Gaige snarls. _Just a kid_. The blood boils in her veins.

He turns his focus back to her as she springs to her feet. His eyes shine bright blue, just like Rainy's, and they stare wide and curious back at her metal arm. Deathtrap!

"Oh yeah? Could a kid do _this?_" She presses her second and third fingers to the tip of her thumb and raises her hand into the air.

A few circuits spark in her arm, but nothing more. She blinks. _Shit_. She'd sent Deathtrap off to help find Banks.

"Guess I'm doing this the old-fashioned way, then," she says, reaching for her shotgun, when a hand grabs onto her ankle. Rainy grabs at the wrench in the holster strapped to her leg. Gaige kicks at her, trying to shake her loose. "Get off!"

Out of the corner of her eye, the man starts reaching for the holster on his hip. She screams out as she pulls the trigger, her leg buckling as Rainy's teeth clamp onto her lower leg, forcing her shot wide. Some of the pellets still connect, knocking him onto his back. Blood starts soaking through the right shoulder of his shirt, but most of the blast was caught by his shield. She brings the butt of her shotgun down on the side of Rainy's head, and her teeth release their grip on her leg.

She snaps her focus back to her twin brother. He's already taking aim at her, his gun arm shaking from the wound. No time to reload. She rushes for him, keeping low to the ground, then dives at him, her left hand grabbing his right wrist and forcing his shot into the rock above.

She grits her teeth, gripping his arm like a vise. The veins in his neck bulge as he screams and drops the gun.

Her left hand shoots out for the pistol. She grabs hold of the barrel when Rainy's arm wraps around her throat from behind. As her arm squeezes the sides of her throat, Gaige gurgles, inadvertently crushing the barrel of the gun in her hand. Gritting her teeth, she drops the pistol, puts her hand over Rainy's balled fist, and clamps down. The weight lifts off her back as Rainy screams in her ear and releases her chokehold.

They're making her sweat, no doubt. But without any raging fires, cloaking devices, or cybernetic augmentations, it's all rather disappointingly easy.

She pushes the man down and smashes her elbow into his stomach, just below the ribcage. Wheezing, he curls up and rolls onto his side. Satisfied that he's incapacitated, she takes a pistol from her digistruct holster and turns to face Rainy, who is doubled over and turned away from her.

"Guess I might as well call you by your real name, huh, Ramona?"

Ramona spits as the man lets out a pained groan.

A grin spreads over Gaige's face. "Damn, the Sheriff is gonna be happy when I bring the Lambert twins to her."

Ramona glares at her, pure malice bubbling behind her sharp, ice blue eyes.

A familiar ratcheting echoes through the cave. A small strip in Ramona's shadow, just between her legs, catches Gaige's eye. The hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. She puts her hand to her chest, reaching for the shoulder strap on her shotgun, but only finds the rough denim of her vest.

Time slows down. A snarl spreads over Ramona's lips. Silvestri's scarred face flashes before Gaige's eyes.

She drops down onto her stomach as Ramona spins on her heel and fires. The shot misses, the pellets flying harmlessly into the wall of the cave behind her. As quick as she went down, Gaige springs to her feet, knowing Ramona only had one shot.

Ramona swings the butt of the shotgun at Gaige, who swats it away like a fly with her metal hand. She slams into Ramona at full speed, crushing her against the wall and knocking her own head against the rock. They both fall to the ground, Ramona wheezing and coughing, the cave spinning in front of Gaige's eyes. With hot pain shooting down her spine and radiating out to her arm, she struggles to push herself onto her back.

Davion Lambert trudges towards her, holding a rock the size of his head under his right arm. "Payback's a bitch," he wheezes, blue eyes sparkling. He winces, favoring his bloody right shoulder as he lifts the rock over his head.

He lets out a loud grunt and throws the rock down at her, but Gaige catches it in her left hand, inches above her face. The cocky glint in his eyes quickly fades as, staring him down all the while, she sets it down by her hip, balls her metal hand into a fist, and smashes it down, crushing the firemelon-sized rock into pebbles.

He looks down at her, dumbfounded. "Shit."

Behind him, something big and angry starts growling. One second later, Davion screams out, falling to his side as his legs buckle. Dukino stands behind him, teeth sunk into his calf muscle.

Ramona takes the opportunity to run unsteadily for the exit. Dazed, Gaige pulls out her sidearm and takes aim, her arm wavering. She fires off a shot. Ramona screams out as blood sprays in a mist from the wound in her lower leg, but she quickly scrambles down the tunnel, out of sight.. Dukino growls at Davion as he rolls onto his stomach, cradling his head with his arms. The skag snaps his jaws, then plods over to Gaige and sniffs at her.

"Good boy," she says, scratching his bottom jaw.

She sighs and presses a finger to her ECHO device. Nisha won't be very happy that she let Ramona slip through her fingers.

* * *

Nisha rides up to the cave on a hovercycle. Gaige raises an eyebrow and whistles as she parks it near the mouth of the tunnel. "Sweet ride," she says, taking a closer look at the black-finished fiberglass chassis.

"Don't scratch it. Thing's about as expensive as you are." Nisha swings her leg over the bike and steps off, then straightens out her coat.

Gaige quirks an eyebrow, waiting for her to remember who she's talking to.

After a beat, Nisha tilts her head to the side. "Alright, maybe not _that_ expensive."

A smirk flickers over Gaige's face. "You find Banks?"

Nisha chews the inside of her cheek as she glances out towards the horizon. "Just what was left of him."

Gaige shakes her head. She hadn't been expecting good news. "That bad, huh?"

Nisha quickly changes the subject. "Where's Lambert?"

She tilts her head. "Come on. He's still inside."

Nisha walks to the entrance to the cave, pausing when she sees a sparse trail of blood in the sand. Her gaze lingers on it for a moment before she looks out of the corner of her narrowed eyes at Gaige. "I winged her, but she got away," Gaige explains, avoiding eye contact.

After rolling her eyes, Nisha ducks into the tunnel, with Gaige close behind. They come to the widened-out cavern, sunlight shining in through the crack running through the rock above them, and find Davion still lying face-down on the ground, hands clasped behind his head. Dukino stands near him, watching him with beady eyes.

"Who's a good boy?" Gaige rushes over to the skag and scratches him under the chin. Dukino sits and tilts his head up.

"Didn't cuff him, huh?" Nisha says, stepping in front of Lambert and looking down her nose at him.

Gaige glances over her shoulder as she rubs Dukino's chest. "Don't really like using handcuffs," she says dismissively. Some ideals, she still has to hold onto. "Besides, he's here, isn't he?" She turns back to Dukino, and her voice goes up in pitch. "Yes he is! Who's a good little sentry?"

"Yeah, and his sister got away," Nisha says, dryly.

Gaige rolls her eyes. "Alright, yeah, that was my own damn fault. I hit my head when I was trying to take her down. But I think I did pretty good considering it was two-on-one!"

Nisha raises an eyebrow and looks at Dukino pointedly.

"Oh, he didn't come in until later. And he did a very good job!" Dukino rolls onto his back, and Gaige squeals and starts rubbing his belly. "Didn't he? Didn't he!"

"Mm. Don't worry. I think I can clean up the rest of your little mess here."

"Mess?" Gaige shoots her a reproachful look. "You wouldn't even have him if it weren't for me!"

"Yeah," Nisha says airily, stepping over Lambert. "And if you'd done it right, I'd have both of them."

The Sheriff bends over and cuffs his wrists together behind his back, then sits him up. "As for _you..._" She stands up and sneers down at him "I figure you two must have some hideout in the dead sands out there. Somewhere you can hunker down until the heat dies off. I'm guessin' your sister is headed there now. Packing her shit and getting the hell out of Dodge. You're gonna tell me where to find her."

"The hell I am!" he says, glaring daggers at her. "She's probably left the planet by now!"

Nisha narrows her eyes. She glances over at the rusted trap resting by the wall of the cave. "Guess we're doin' this the hard way."

"The hell are you doing?" he says, watching Nisha walk over and pick up the trap. She steps back in front of him and holds it over his feet, then drops it. He moves his legs apart just as the trap lands with a heavy thud in the dirt.

Keeping one eye on him, Nisha steps down on the lever and pulls apart the toothed metal jaws.

"What the hell is she doing?!" He looks over at Gaige. "You just gonna sit there? Do something!"

Gaige quietly clears her throat and watches as Nisha pulls a lever over one of the trap's jaws and secures it under the pressure plate. With the jaws locked and the trap armed, she stands up again.

"Trap this size is meant to snare skags about as big as him." She tilts her head over at Dukino. Lambert shoots a leery glance over at the skag standing at Gaige's side. "Powerful enough to break your leg, if you stepped in it."

Lambert clamps his jaw and glares up at the Sheriff from underneath lowered eyebrows. "What, you're gonna break my legs? I ain't tellin' you _shit_!"

Nisha lets out a cold laugh. "No." She puts her left boot down on his lower leg, then leans over and whispers, "I'm gonna close it on your balls."

The Sheriff bares her teeth and kicks Lambert square in the chest. He grunts and lands on his back, trapping his hands underneath himself. He digs his heels into the ground and tries to scoot away, while the Sheriff calmly picks up the skag trap in her left hand and walks over to him. "No no no no no, get the hell away from me! Stop her!"

He tries to make eye contact with Gaige, but she just glances away. If he hadn't tried to crush her head with a boulder, she might be more inclined to try and get the Sheriff to back off.

He screams out as the Sheriff steps down on his leg, just above the knee. He tries to kick her with his free foot, but she draws her bladed revolver from its holster and takes a swipe at him, nicking his lower leg with the tip of the bayonet.

"Last chance, Lambert!" She lets out a grunt as she kicks him in the leg, spreading them apart. He backs himself into the wall of the cave as she plunges her bayonet into the inseam of his pants and starts ripping them open.

"The Highlands!" His voice breaks as the Sheriff stops to look up at him. "We've got a place in the highlands, right near Chaudry Falls!"

The Sheriff gives him a long, calculating stare before dropping the bear trap to his side. She reaches down next to her boot and picks up a rock. "If I get there, and she's gone..."

Davion eyes her gloved hand as it extends out to the side and drops the rock. It bounces off the trigger plate. The trap jumps a few inches off the ground as its metal jaws smash together. He flinches as the loud clang echoes through the cave, shaking fine grains of dust loose from the walls.

"I'm gonna _feed_ them to you," she growls.

* * *

The Lamberts' place near Chaudry Falls is little more than a stone shack, walls made of rocks ranging in color from faded teal to blue-gray, and a roof made of tin sheets. Gaige and Nisha watch from a ridge about a hundred yards away, well out of sight of the main path leading towards it. Dusk is upon the Highlands, the waning light turning the sky at the horizon a brilliant mix of pink, orange, and blue, as Gaige takes a look at the shack's small window through her binoculars.

Nisha lies on her stomach by Gaige's side. "Any movement?" she asks, affixing a bipod to her sniper rifle.

Gaige shakes her head. "Not that I can see..." She sets her binoculars down and sighs. "You think she's in there?"

Nisha shrugs, taking a quick glance through her scope.

Gaige looks down at her fingernails, then sneaks a peek at Nisha. "Hey, uh... you weren't actually going to... to, uh..."

"Crush his balls with a skag trap?" she says, casually.

Gaige cringes. "Yeah," she groans. "That."

Nisha chuckles to herself, then hums. "What good's a threat if you're not prepared to follow through?"

Gaige sighs and rests her hand on her cheek, turning her gaze up to the top of the nearby cliff face, watching the water as it jumps over the crest and drops straight down, splashing into the small lagoon at its base before gushing down the hillside. The gentle hissing of the water crashing down sends her mind wandering, back to Lambert, and Glanton, and Samuels, and Brick, then...

She clenches her jaw, then slaps her hands against the rocks. "Alright, I need to know," she says, turning to face Nisha. "Why did you kiss me?"

Gazing through her scope, Nisha smirks. "I was under the impression that that never happened."

Gaige rolls her eyes. "Just shut up and tell me."

She slowly glances over at her. "What is it with you?"

Gaige narrows her eyes, glaring down at the ground. "How could you have ever dated a monster like Jack?"

The rush of the waterfall dominates the air for a moment. "Oh." Nisha sets her sniper rifle aside. "I see what this is."

"No, you don't see-"

"I dated Jack, so the only reason I'd be interested in you is because you're like him, is that it?" She turns, focusing her undivided attention on Gaige. "You must be a monster because I'd have no other reason to kiss you! That's what you think of me?"

A rush of ice flows down Gaige's spine. In not even ten seconds, Nisha struck at the heart of what had been bothering her, what she hadn't even been able to figure out, since the last nightfall, nearly seventy hours ago. "Well that's it, isn't it? I mean you said yourself how I burned those trailers down, and I don't even know why I did it! I- I didn't even realize what I was-"

She falls silent as Nisha holds her hand up. "Two things. First, you wanna know _why_ you burned those trailers down?"

Gaige scoffs and looks down at the ground, her eyes starting to sting. "Why, because I'm like Jack? Because I'm like _you_?"

"Because you don't know _what_ you are! You don't understand that every single one of us has a dark side, living and breathing inside us! And just like any other living thing, the more you feed it, the stronger it gets! This planet didn't _change_ you, it just brought out what was already there! What was lurking just underneath your skin! You never had to deal with it before, so you didn't even feel it creep up and take control until it was too late to stop it! As much as you don't like to admit it, that dark side is just as much a part of you as anything else. And it'll always be there. So you can spend your whole life fighting it, running away from it, ignoring it... or you can accept it. And be what you are."

She chews her lip, the gentle gushing of the waterfall threatening to spirit away her thoughts as she lets every last word soak in. "What was the second thing?"

Nisha sighs and reaches for her rifle. "It would be easy to brand Jack a monster. But he wasn't special. I told you, _everybody_ has a dark side. Everybody is capable of killing another human being; you only need to look at yourself to know that. Jack wasn't a monster, or a demon. Just a man, corrupted by the darkness inside him. Just as human as you or me. And _any_ one of us could have turned out like he did."

Gaige's breaths become short and shallow. The back of her neck tingles. The schism between herself and Jack is suddenly, terrifyingly small. Demonizing him was one thing. The things he put his own daughter through, his desire to "cleanse" Pandora...

Humanizing him is much more horrifying. But Nisha is right. Pretending like nobody else could ever turn out like Jack is dangerous. She's felt that from experience. From her own dark side, lurking, brooding under her skin.

Glanton may have been more right than he realized. They are _all_ monsters.

Something white flashes past the window of the shack. She narrows her eyes and picks up her binoculars. Nisha frowns, then looks through her scope. The front door opens, and a blonde woman peeks around before stepping out, heavily favoring her hastily-bandaged right leg.

"Looks like somebody's leaving home." Nisha taps her index finger against the body of her rifle, but doesn't tuck it into the trigger guard yet.

Gaige covers her ears. A few seconds pass, and she shoots Nisha a confused look. "You have a clear shot!"

She looks back at her and shrugs. "Yeah. I just want her to know she lost."

Her eyes start to sting as she remembers Ramona throwing sand in her face. She glances over at Nisha. _Be what you are_.

"Well why didn't you say so?" she says, a malicious grin spreading over her face.

* * *

Gaige steps out into the open as Ramona loads the last of her gear into her parked runner. "You lose, Lambert!"

Ramona snaps up to look at her, then glares, her eyes pouring seething anger. "_You_," she growls. "The Sheriff's little lapdog come to clean up the mess she made?"

Gaige chuckles. "Somethin' like that, yeah." She hooks her thumb into her belt and slowly walks up to the front of the car. Ramona's eyes track between Gaige and the trunk a few times.

"You should've just let me fuck you and rob you when you had the chance," Ramona says through gritted teeth.

"Nah." With an amused smile, Gaige shrugs one shoulder. "I'm not really into blondes."

The grin falls off her face as she narrows her eyes at Ramona, fingers twitching, ready to grab her pistol at the first sign of movement. Lambert glances down at the trunk again, then back up at Gaige, stiffly.

The churning of the waterfall becomes more and more indistinct, giving way to the dull rush of blood in her ears, her galloping heartbeat throbbing in her head.

Ramona grinds her teeth. "Go to hell."

Her arms start to move from the trunk. Gaige takes aim and squeezes the trigger. A thundercrack of a gunshot pierces through the air, and Ramona's head jerks back, a spray of blood shooting out behind her as she falls back, behind the vehicle.

She walks around the runner and looks down her nose at Ramona Lambert, lying motionless in the grass, blood trickling from the small wound in her forehead, crimson matting blonde hair, vacant eyes staring to the sky. Gaige snorts. "See you there, bitch."

"She dead?" the Sheriff's voice hisses in the ECHO in her ear.

Gaige nudges a limp hand with the toe of her sneaker. "Yeah."

"You alright?" Nisha says.

"Yeah." She stores her revolver in her digistruct deck and starts walking back towards the hovercycle. "Let's get outta here."

* * *

She stays silent the whole ride back to Lynchwood, her arms wrapped tight around Nisha's waist, her chin resting on her right shoulder. Just over halfway back, Nisha had shot her a curious glance, but said nothing.

Night hangs over the city. The streets are bare, save the moonlit shadows, and Nisha's bike, humming as it pulls up to the front door of Gaige's apartment.

Gaige swings her leg over the seat and lowers her self off the bike as Nisha shuts off the engine. She takes her helmet off, shakes her red hair loose, and looks over at Nisha.

Could it have been that darker side of her that kissed her? Or was it more complicated than that? Nisha is just about her only friend in this town. She likes some of the other officers, but she never told them, or even the Vault Hunters, some of the things she's told Nisha. She hasn't been in Lynchwood terribly long, but they've already been through a lot together. And Nisha seems to like her...

The Sheriff grins deviously at her. "Not into blondes, huh?" she says, raising her eyebrows.

Chuckling, Gaige scuffs her shoe against the dirt road.

"Unless..." She glances briefly to the side, the wind tousling her mocha hair. "Is that one of those things that we're pretending didn't happen? I can't really keep track."

"Oh, come on..."

"Nah, I get it." She hooks her thumbs into her pockets and takes a step forward. "You think it was a mistake."

Gaige snorts quietly, her hands fidgeting around for a natural position to fall into. "You seem convinced otherwise."

Nisha arches her brow, her eyes sparkling in the night air. "I didn't hear any complaints when my hand was up your skirt."

Gaige chews her bottom lip, her cheeks glowing hot at the memory. Her eyes close as Nisha's low, suggestive chuckle rolls through her ear. The sand grinds under her boots until her warm breath gentles over Gaige's neck and right shoulder.

"I'd hate for something like that to go to waste..."

Nisha's smoky whisper triggers a gentle sparking sensation in Gaige's ear that spiderwebs out across her scalp as warm tingles, starting at the base of her neck, cascade down the curve of her spine, leaving a blissful electricity in their wake.

"But if you tell me 'no'... I'll walk away."

She opens her eyes and gazes at the lock of chocolate hair swept across Nisha's cheek.

She could back out with one little syllable... but she won't.

Her hands find their natural position – on the lapels of Nisha's coat. She stands on her tiptoes and leans in, until their lips teasingly graze together. "Be my guilty pleasure."

Nisha's hands seize her by the waist as she leans into a heated kiss. Gaige starts stepping back towards her apartment, guiding Nisha with her. She fumbles blindly for the doorknob.

Maybe it was a mistake. But who said all mistakes are bad?


	5. With a White-Knuckled Fist

**a/n:** It's so good to be back! I would like to thank all you reviewers and silent readers for your continued support. I try not to make you wait too long for updates, but when I fail at that, I'd like to try and make the wait worth it. So hopefully I've at least done that. With that out of the way, I'd also like to take this space to issue a content warning: there's a smut scene in this chapter. And last, I'd like to thank LittlePorcelainDoll for helping with it, since I would have been editing for another month otherwise.

* * *

Gaige unbuckles the gauntlet on Nisha's wrist and tosses it aside as Nisha leans back into the door, shutting it. Gaige locks the deadbolt with a twitch of her wrist. After taking the choker off of Nisha's neck, Gaige leans in, brushing her nose against her skin. She inhales, slow and deep. A rich, perfumed aroma of crisp pumpkin, followed by the spicy kick of cinnamon. Gaige sighs as she peels Nisha's duster off her shoulders, letting it drop to the ground.

Nisha leans in, hot breath wafting over Gaige's ear, the long, tremulous sigh sending a warm, gentle pricking sensation down her back, and phantom tingles into her left arm. Nisha unbuckles the collar on Gaige's neck, letting it drop to the floor with a muted thump. Wet lips trail along the shell of her ear, then Nisha's teeth pull slowly on her earlobe. She slips her hand into Nisha's, lacing their fingers. With a lift of her brow, she turns, leading them down the hall to her bedroom. Her heart gallops in her chest with every step, and she's sure Nisha can feel her palm breaking out in a sweat.

Strong, tapered fingers grab her by her bare shoulder, turning her and pressing her back against the wall. Nisha leans in for a kiss, her tongue playing at Gaige's lips and parting them, meeting her teeth, her tongue. Nisha's fingers dance down Gaige's neck, tracing the hollow of her collarbone before trailing down her chest. Seizing the denim in her hand, and with a demonstrative nibble of Gaige's lower lip, she pulls, popping the three buttons open and sliding it off. Gaige breaks the kiss and gasps as Nisha's lips leave a hot trail down her neck and onto her shoulder.

Gaige licks her lips, managing to pull Nisha off her long enough to lead them both through the doorway to her bedroom. She toes off her faded sneakers as Nisha presses against her from behind. Soft fingertips slide up the back of her neck and over her scalp, then take out the makeshift clips holding her pigtails in place. Sighing in her ear, Nisha slips off Gaige's goggles to run her fingers through her thick red hair.

Her heart hammers in her chest, either from the excitement of Nisha's touch or the bitter dread and venomous doubt ever lurking in the back of her throat – or all of it. Gaige closes her eyes, trying to steady her shallow breathing. Nisha moves her hands to Gaige's shoulders, kneading her taut muscles.

"You're so tense," Nisha whispers in her ear.

She lets out a stilted, nervous giggle. "No, I just – I've never..."

Her hands sliding along Gaige's upper arms, Nisha hums softly. "With a woman?" she murmurs, the rise of her voice curious, rather than skeptical.

Gulping, Gaige shakes her head.

"Ever?" Nisha's breath tickles her skin, and Gaige nods when warm, wet lips press against the base of her neck. Nisha smiles into Gaige's skin. "Then I'll go easy on you."

Maybe from the way her thumbs slowly swirl into her shoulders, Gaige feels the air hanging over her grow lighter, and she lets out a soft chuckle despite herself. Nisha hums, her hands trailing down to Gaige's waist and sliding her belt off. Nisha's fingers trace over the bit of exposed skin on Gaige's tummy, between her shirt and skirt. Gaige turns around and fumbles with the buttons on Nisha's vest as light hands settle on the small of her back.

"You're nervous," Nisha whispers playfully, almost teasingly.

Gaige sighs and looks down, avoiding Nisha's eyes until a soft touch slides under her chin and tilts it back up.

"The first time, the seconds go on forever." Her voice is slow and smoky, and Gaige feels her breathing slow down as the words trail down her neck.

Gaige twists her body back and forth gently. "And the second?"

Nisha hums, low and thoughtful, before answering. "Like taking your first breath."

Gaige chews her bottom lip and smiles as Nisha steps back, sits on the foot of the bed, and extends a leg towards her. With a brief glance at the smirk on Nisha's lips, Gaige slowly kneels down and unbuckles her boot. She pulls it off and lets it fall to the floor, slides her sock off, then repeats with her other foot. Gaige skims her fingertips over Nisha's feet and glides her hands up over her legs.

Leaning forward, Nisha takes Gaige's hand in hers and takes off her wristguard and glove. She guides Gaige's hands down to unfasten her pants, then moves them to her hips. Following her lead, Gaige slides Nisha's pants off, letting them drop to the floor as she drinks her in. Nisha smiles at her from under heavy-lidded eyes, then grabs her by the wrists and pulls her in.

Gaige takes in a trembling breath. She skims her fingertips over the inside of Nisha's wrist and up her arm, relishing the smoothness of her skin. She leans in and Nisha's teeth graze over her neck as she drags neatly trimmed fingernails up Gaige's back. Something dark and adventurous rumbles deep inside her chest, and she lets out a long, guttural groan as Nisha pulls her shirt off.

Nisha's eyes widen. "Wow," she whispers, and Gaige feels her face flushing. She holds Gaige's shirt to her face and sniffs it before tossing it aside. "That was... _sexy_."

Gaige eases herself back far enough to look into Nisha's eyes, her hands resting on her waist. Nobody has ever called her, or anything she's ever done, _sexy_ before. Her heart beats faster in her chest, and she feels that dark, dirty part of herself stirring to life.

"You're always surprising me, aren't you?" Nisha purrs, popping up a suggestive eyebrow.

"Hope so," Gaige says. She leans in, takes the hem of Nisha's black shirt in her hands, and pulls it off of her.

Nisha's firm hands take her by the waist and she lies back, pulling Gaige down on top of her as they lock into a deep kiss, Nisha's tongue meeting hers with bold strokes. Gaige rests her elbows on either side of Nisha, letting most of her weight rest on her. For a moment, she's content to feel Nisha's fingers following the length of her spine, until she starts to notice the smooth sensation of Nisha's tummy against her own contrasting with the thick fabric of her skirt and leggings between their legs. As if reading her mind, Nisha finds the top of Gaige's skirt, and her thumbs slide underneath it as, swallowing a groan from Gaige, she slides it down over her hips. Breaking their kiss, Nisha rolls Gaige onto her back and takes her skirt the rest of the way off. Gaige takes a deep breath and looks into Nisha's eyes, aflame with raw sensuality as they roam over her maroon bra and the black and white stripes of her leggings.

Her full pink lips curve into a grin and Nisha leans down, her hips stuck up in the air as she kisses her way slowly up over Gaige's belly. Gaige sticks her chest out as Nisha's lips slide over her skin and onto her collarbone, her fingertips teasing Gaige's sides. Nisha's touch glows hot with passion as she explores Gaige's body. Gaige tries to keep from bucking at every small sensation setting her veins on fire. Everything is so new to her, but she doesn't shy away. Every touch is so practiced, so raw, giving her a headrush stronger than any she can remember, and every time her lip trembles or she takes a deep breath, it's another reminder of how alive she feels right now, and that is _all_ that matters.

She reaches her hand up and guides Nisha's head down so she can suck on her neck. Gaige slides her tongue over her skin and feels the steady, rhythmic pound of her pulse surging hot through her. Nisha lets out a heavy sigh, and Gaige slides her hand down her back, brushing her fingertips over her underwear. She takes in a long, deep breath, then lets it out gently against Nisha's neck.

Lips graze over Gaige's earlobe, then brush lightly over her cheek. Nisha kisses her, lips burning and heavy with lust. As teeth tug on Gaige's lower lip, she arches her back, letting Nisha's confident fingers slip underneath her and unclasp her bra, then slide the straps off her shoulders. Nisha gazes down at her, laid bare from the waist up. Gaige feels her cheeks grow hot. Nisha flashes her a smile, reassuring in its desire, then leans down, laying a hot trail of kisses up her body, all the way up to her chin.

Gaige puts her hand to Nisha's cheek and looks into her eyes, two fire opals burning with desire. Gaige gulps, unable to look away. All at once, she realizes what Nisha meant when she said that love was irrelevant. A dozen thoughts flash through her mind, but they are all drowned out by the deep, instinctive need to feel Nisha's body against hers, to run her fingertips over her skin, to get closer to her until she can feel that lust that illuminates those orange eyes as her own.

The impulse overrides her apprehension and she slides her hands to Nisha's back. She unhooks her bra and pulls it off. Needing to feel more of her, she pulls Nisha down into a tight embrace, and their lips meet in a hungry kiss. She moves her hands to the small of Nisha's back, and she drags her fingernails up along her skin. Nisha arches her back, pressing their bodies together. Gaige relishes the warmth of her skin against her, the softness of her breasts against her own, the reassuring glow of every touch.

Breathless, they break their kiss. Gaige looks with an aching longing into Nisha's eyes staring back at her, all fire and yearning. She leans down and nips at Gaige's neck, then soothes the bites with her tongue. Gaige leans her head back and tangles her fingers in Nisha's hair as she works her mouth down along Gaige's neck and onto her collarbone, nibbling at her taut skin, lapping at the sweat beginning to bead.

Nisha's fingertips stroke soft and slow over her sides, and Gaige quivers. She slides her metal hand over Nisha's back as lips trail down and hug the curve of her breast. Nisha licks at her skin, and Gaige strokes her hand slowly along Nisha's back, not wanting the moment to end, urging Nisha to move slower. She arches her back as Nisha's hand cups her other breast, her palm massaging back and forth, leaving Gaige struggling to catch her breath.

She lifts her head and watches Nisha move to kiss her other breast, her chest rising and falling sharply as Nisha's lips brush over her skin. She plunges her hand through Nisha's hair, pulling it out of her face, watching, gasping as Nisha's lips encircle her nipple, sucking it to a hardened peak. Their eyes meet briefly, and Gaige moans her pleasure, fingertips digging into the muscles of Nisha's shoulders.

Nisha grins back at Gaige before kissing her way down over her stomach, her hands settling at her hips, fingertips dipping underneath her leggings. Gaige takes in a deep breath and leans her head back, lifting her hips into the air as Nisha kisses along her tummy. She feels the mattress shift beneath her as Nisha's fingertips trail down the sides of her legs, sliding her leggings off, along with her underwear.

Gaige's breathing quickens as Nisha's fingers and lips lay hot trails slowly up her legs. Firm hands settle on her hips, and Gaige puts her own trembling hands on top of them, feeling the warmth of her skin, the pressure of her fingertips, the raw power of a blazing fire that she never knew raged inside her, an inferno that terrifies her as much as it excites her. Nisha brushes her thumbs over her hipbones before she takes Gaige's hands in hers. Gaige squeezes, but it does nothing to slow her thundering heartbeat. She lifts her head and looks down into Nisha's eyes to find them staring back at her, sparkling like starlight reflected in calm water. Gaige takes in a deep breath, then lays her head back down, her thumb stroking the back of Nisha's hand.

Nisha's kisses are slow and gentle on her inner thighs before her mouth settles between her legs. Closing her eyes, Gaige gasps as Nisha's warm lips ghost over her sensitive skin. Soft hair tickles her thighs, and she feels her heart pounding harder in her chest as Nisha starts sucking gently. She starts rolling her hips in a slow, steady rhythm, becoming more breathless with each flit of Nisha's tongue. A fever of passion builds under her skin, shooting through her veins, sparking her nerves, winding her tighter and tighter.

She hooks a leg around Nisha's body, digging her heel into her lower back. Her hips twitch and she gasps as Nisha dips her head, her tongue sliding over her in long, slow swipes. She feels herself spreading her legs apart a bit further, her metal hand splaying flat onto the mattress and squeezing the sheets. Nisha's fingertips start stroking as she kisses her thighs before settling again between them. Gaige's chest rises and falls erratically as she plunges her fingers into Nisha's hair.

Trembling, she rocks in time with the languid spirals of Nisha's tongue. Head to toe, she is overtaken by an urgent electricity that coils itself inside her around every muscle, a tension that manages to be blissful, terrifying, and intoxicating all at once. The pressure builds at the base of her spine, threatening to shatter her completely. She throws her head back and gasps, struggling against the pleasant tightness seizing her chest.

Nisha's tongue swirls faster, and when the tension starts to feel like it's too much and Gaige's hips buck into the air, one of Nisha's fingers melt into her welcoming flesh. She whimpers Nisha's name, squeezing her hair in her fist. Nisha keeps her rhythm with the rolling of Gaige's hips, the fever building beneath her skin unraveling her nerves, her mind, her thoughts. She entrusts herself to Nisha, letting her carry her away, twitching and moaning. A second finger slides into her in rhythm with the first, and Nisha's tongue flattens against her, pressing harder. With every stroke of her fingers and swirl of her tongue, Gaige comes more and more undone.

Then time slows down around them as Nisha brings her crashing beautifully, terrifyingly, uncontrollably over the edge.

She writhes and gasps as the tension and electricity that had been coiled so tightly inside her bursts, consuming everything but pure sensation. Her heel digs hard into Nisha's back as her spine arches off the sweat-dampened sheets and she lets out an ecstatic moan at the pulsing muscles in her hips, so deliciously outside her own control as the current of pleasure sweeps her away. It is an ecstasy that washes completely through her, wave after wave alternately soothing and shattering her to the core; a force that leaves no part of her untouched, but that she can only grasp at as it slowly leaves her trembling in a wonderfully breathless daze.

She collapses into a breathless mess on the mattress. She manages to lift her head up briefly to look down at Nisha, getting a glance at the wonder in her orange eyes. As her breathing slows, she feels the weight around her legs shift. Nisha slowly crawls up towards her, then lies down, half on the bed, half on top of her. Gaige wraps her arms around Nisha, riding out the last of the aftershocks. When she finally collects herself, she exhales slowly, then smiles up at Nisha. "Wow," she whispers, sliding her hand slowly along Nisha's back.

A satisfied smile works its way across Nisha's lips. She brushes aside a stray strand of red hair, then snickers. "That was fun."

Giggling, Gaige slides her hand slowly across Nisha's upper back. "You're telling me." Nisha flashes a toothy grin at her, orange eyes glimmering deviously, before leaning down for a kiss that Gaige can't help but smile into. When they pull apart, she whispers, "I thought you said you'd go _easy_ on me."

Nisha lets out a low, sultry giggle before stealing another kiss. "I did."

"Mmm..." Gaige traces a fingertip along Nisha's neck. "...but what about you?"

Nisha slowly tastes Gaige's bottom lip before raising a suggestive eyebrow. Gaige's eyes widen, and she mouths an '_oh_'.

"I want to watch," she whispers, a wolfish grin spreading to both ears.

Narrowing her eyes, Nisha chuckles. "Hmm?"

Gaige nods, raising her eyebrows. "Please?" Giggling, she slides her hands over Nisha's sides and onto her hips, then starts inching her underwear down.

Nisha leans in for another kiss, her tongue parting Gaige's lips and exploring her mouth. She hums, amused, then whispers, "Well, since you're so _insistent_..."

Gaige takes one last whiff of her hair before Nisha straightens up. Nisha tugs down her underwear and tosses it aside, then kneels astride Gaige's waist. Gaige gazes up at her in reverential awe, aching to feel more of Nisha's skin on her than the insides of her knees and the sides of her feet rested against her thighs. Her hand moves towards Nisha's thigh, but Nisha snaps a teasingly reproachful look down at her, one corner of her mouth curled into a smirk.

Her cheeks flushing with heat, Gaige lets her hand drop over her navel. Nisha flashes a satisfied grin, then leans her head back and closes her eyes, fingers trailing down the slope of her abdominal muscles before she sets to work.

Gaige's breathing shallows as she watches. Nisha's mouth opens slightly, her tongue darting briefly along her lip. Her hips twitch with every slight movement of her hand, as her strokes slow for a moment before speeding back up. Gaige hums, mesmerized. Whether she's putting on a show for her, or this is how she always does it, Gaige isn't sure, but as her thumb swirls slowly over her skin, it's clear Nisha has no interest in teasing herself.

A muted breath escapes Nisha's lips as her hips roll forward with easy purpose, one finger, then two, sliding in and out with a strong, steady rhythm. Gaige doesn't notice her own hand going for her mechanical arm until she feels the small motor embedded near her wrist buzz to life, and her metal fingers start pulsating.

Nisha's eyelids flit open lazily at the buzz, her hips and wrist freezing only momentarily. Her smoky eyes fall on Gaige's hand; she reaches out for it and pulls her up. Gaige rests her hand on Nisha's hip as Nisha guides her metal one down, replacing her own. Gaige tilts her head back, watching Nisha close her eyes. Her cybernetic hand is unsteady at first – and not only from the motor humming and whirring inside her arm – but Nisha puts her own hand on top of it and guides Gaige's uncertain fingers along, giving her time to stroke and tease, to become comfortable with her skin.

Nisha turns her face toward the ceiling, her breaths still hushed, but becoming increasingly shallow and uneven. Gaige hadn't expected her to be so quiet, but those hushed whimpers and gasps only ignite her passion all the more.

Gaige leans in to kiss Nisha's breast, apprehensive the first time, but quickly emboldened by the warmth of Nisha's breath on her bare shoulder, the gentle puff of air caressing the shell of her ear. She traces the curve of her breast with her lips, swirling her tongue slowly around her nipple as her left hand keeps stroking sure and steady, still guided by Nisha's own.

Nisha moans Gaige's name, and Gaige feels her heart skip a beat as she grazes her lips over the swell of Nisha's other breast. She slides her right hand up along Nisha's thigh as she tastes her skin, hot and kissed with a sheen of sweat.

Nisha bucks her hips forward to meet Gaige's vibrating hand. Gaige lets out a warm breath over Nisha's chest as she slips one pulsating metal finger inside her, then two. Seizing a handful of Gaige's thick hair in her hand, Nisha growls her approval. Their breathing quickens, Nisha's chest rising and falling against Gaige's cheek. She removes her hand from Gaige's metal arm, then runs her fingertips down her back, sending a shiver through her spine.

Gradually, Gaige speeds up her strokes, following Nisha's galloping heartbeat against her cheek. Nisha pulls at Gaige's hair, tilting her head back and pulling her into a fevered kiss. Her hips roll forward, and Gaige applies more pressure with her palm, drawing a lustful moan from Nisha's lips.

Their eyes lock briefly when they pull apart for air, but Nisha's eyelids flutter closed as Gaige's fingers fall into exhilarating rhythm. She squeezes a fistful of Gaige's hair and her other hand finds her back, fingernails digging into her skin. Gaige gasps sharply, but doesn't lose her rhythm, and doesn't take her eyes off of Nisha's flushed face, her trembling lip, or her wild hair, unkempt from adventurous fingers running through it. She slides her hand over Nisha's thigh, the hard bone of her hip, the soft curve of her ass, feeling the muscles pulsing beneath her fingers.

Taking a deep breath, Gaige curls her metal fingers inside her and swirls her vibrating thumb with gentle pressure, watching as Nisha leans her head back. Her breath comes out in quiet bursts until her hips jerk forward and the skin on her neck flushes red. Her full lips spread in an open-mouthed grin, letting out a few short, uneven moans as her fingers clamp down tight onto Gaige's shoulder. Her skin gleaming with sweat, Nisha's chest rises and falls as she gasps, barely managing to catch her breath. Gaige slows down the strokes of her fingers, coaxing Nisha down from her climax, watching her face, spellbound that she could make the woman who held so tightly to control fall to pieces in her arms.

Nisha leans into Gaige, her chest rumbling as she hums contentedly. Grinning, Gaige eases herself onto her back, then rests her hands on Nisha's back. Steadily, the rise and fall of Nisha's chest against her own slows. Only after Nisha regains her composure does she open her eyes and look down at Gaige. Brushing her thumb over her cheek, she grins. "You sure know how to put that arm to good use," she says, elbows resting on either side of Gaige's shoulders, fingers tracing through her red hair.

Gaige presses her lips together, then grins sheepishly. "Lots of practice."

Nisha chuckles, then plants a soft kiss on her lips. "Feeling guilty?" she says, a teasing tone to her voice.

Gaige wraps her arms a little tighter around her, not wanting the sensation of Nisha's heartbeat against her own to end. She smiles, then shakes her head. "That was..." She lets out a little giggle, then sighs. "Incredible."

Slowly, Nisha smiles, and Gaige feels its warmth sink into her chest. "So were you."

Her smile widening, Gaige moves her hand to the back of Nisha's head and kisses her again. When they pull apart and lie side-by-side on the bed, a comfortable silence falls between them, and Gaige strokes her fingers slowly through Nisha's hair, content to feel the slow cadence of her warm breath on her skin. She studies the bowline of Nisha's lip, the arch of her thick brow, the gentle slope of her nose. She wasn't completely sure before why she couldn't resist her, but after surrendering herself to Nisha's medicating touch, she understands.

Just when Gaige thinks she may have fallen asleep, Nisha lifts her head and hums softly. "I need a shower."

Gaige smiles back at her and giggles. "Just one?"

Nisha's brow furrows down in the middle and curiosity sparks in her eyes. "Why?" A smirk ghosts over her lips. "You have more plans for tonight?"

* * *

"Well, whaddaya think?"

Gaige sticks out her hip and rests her hand on her waist. Nisha looks her up and down, starting at the black boots on her feet, traveling up her brown pants and flickering over the holster strapped to her thigh. She presses her lips together as her eyes fall on the white and purple horizontally-striped shirt. "That's a little small, don't you think?" she says, her gaze lingering on the few inches of exposed skin between her belt and the bottom of her shirt.

Gaige glances down and fingers its hem. "I didn't have time to pack much when I left home, okay? I thought this was cute."

"'Cute'?"

She shrugs off Nisha's confused look. "What? It looks good, doesn't it?"

Nisha glances up into her eyes, then shrugs a shoulder. "I'm not arguing otherwise. Not sure _I_ could pull it off, but..."

"You kidding me?" Gaige chuckles. "With _that_ body? You could _totally_ pull off a look like this. Besides, I seem to remember a few days ago, when a certain someone said how she didn't want me in 'that damn school-girl outfit'..."

Nisha flashes a toothy grin. "I think you misinterpreted what I meant."

A smile spreads over Gaige's lips. She straightens up, giving her reflection a once-over. "I do like the boots, though," she says, thudding a heel against the floor. "I don't know how you run in those high-heeled things."

"Don't need to run if you're a good enough shot." Nisha taps her finger against her chin. "It's missing something. And you're gonna have to do something about that hair."

Her smile fades as quickly as it had arrived. Gaige grabs a small charcoal vest and pulls it on, then looks at the reflection of Nisha rummaging in the closet. "What's wrong with my hair?" While waiting for an answer, she stares down her own reflection, then flicks her wrists, aiming a pair of finger-guns at the mirror. "Faster 'n you!"

With an amused look on her face, Nisha walks over to Gaige and lets her pigtails down before putting a black derby hat on her head. "Nothing. There. You bet your sweet ass people will think twice before getting in your way now."

She runs her fingers along its curved brim, admiring the chrome skull-and-crossed-pistols decal on the front. With a flourish of her wrists, she turns around and looks at Nisha expectantly. "Well?"

Nisha steps back, taking in her new look from head to toe. "I was right." Her eyes flicker with hunger. "Purple _definitely_ suits you."

* * *

The sunlight beats down heavily on Gaige's back as she and Nisha patrol the south side of town on skagback. A group of five miners sit outside the mine's entrance, taking lunch break in the middle of another bitch of a day in Lynchwood.

Gaige stares out into the Dead Sands, grateful for the vast stretch of desert separating them from the nearest bandit encampment. But she's even more grateful for the derby Nisha had given her, since it's the only thing keeping her even remotely comfortable in the unrelenting heat.

"Quiet around here lately," Nisha says, adjusting her skag mount's reins in her hands.

Gaige hums in agreement. In the week since Davion Lambert was hanged, there hasn't been much in the way of crime to keep them busy. "Usually does after executions. ...doesn't it?"

She shakes her head. "Not like this. And definitely not for this long."

"Well. It's not like there's been _no_ action lately." She winks suggestively at Nisha and adjusts her bowler. "Besides, are you actually saying you miss having robbers and murderers to catch?"

Smirking, Nisha glances at her out of the corner of her eye. "I'm sayin' this ain't the Lynchwood I know and love."

"Ah." Gaige nods as they pull their skags to a stop in the shade of one of the grinders. "Maybe you need a hobby. Aside from interrogations and scaring the crap out of people. Like me, I have Deathtrap."

Nisha smirks and reaches into her coat, pulling out a black and silver flask. "I don't think I have the patience for making a robot," she says, unscrewing the cap.

"Yeah, maybe not. I just thought that you'd like something to help you kill stuff faster. Like a, uh..." She frowns and looks up at the sky. "Like a wrist-mounted cannon! Huh?" Nisha stares back at her with her best poker face. "No? That's okay, I'm full of ideas."

She brings the flask to her mouth, then chuckles when she puts the cap back on. "I don't doubt it."

Nisha's eyes narrow as she looks off towards the mine. Pocketing her flask, she nods at the group of miners just outside.

"That look like a badge to you?"

Gaige blinks, then follows Nisha's gaze. A rat in red coveralls and a clean white gas mask, stretches his arms over his head. On the satchel hanging from his hip sits a shiny bit of gold-colored metal. Even from distance, the six arms reflect the sunlight, sticking out plain as the glowing eyes on a thresher. She raises her eyebrows. "Now where do you suppose he got his hands on that?"

Nisha's lips curl into a malicious grin. "Oh, I am itching to find out." She nudges her skag forward with her heels, and Gaige does the same. "Hyah!"

At the sound of galloping paws thumping against the sand, all five men in the group look over, then immediately duck their heads. Four of them scatter as the rat hurriedly folds the nylon roll-up bag lying on the ground in front of him. Nisha slows her skag to a stop, hopping off as the rat straightens up. "What's the hurry? Just wanna talk."

The rat shakes his head and starts backpedaling towards the mine. "Back to work," he grumbles. "No time for converssssation."

Nisha rolls her eyes as the rat turns his back to her. She reaches into her coat and pulls out a brown bullwhip. She raises her arm, and with a flick of her wrist, the end of the whip coils around the rat's lower leg. She yanks the handle towards her, and the rat yelps as he falls to his stomach. She walks over to him before he can get to his feet and handcuffs him.

The rat struggles against the restraints, trying to wriggle out of her grasp. "Why don't you relax?" she says, grabbing the back of his shirt. "We're gonna have a nice conversation, you and I." She straightens up, coiling her whip back up and setting it back in its holster on her belt. When her eyes meet Gaige's, her lips part and her brow furrows. "What are you looking at me like that for?"

Gaige blinks slowly, then closes her mouth and clears her throat, only now realizing she had been staring. "Nothing. It's just..." She licks her lips and raises her eyebrows. "You never told me you have a whip."

* * *

Nisha and Gaige stand on the dark side of the two-way glass, staring down the rat sitting in the interrogation room, hands shackled to the steel table. He wrings his hands together, staring at the lights, at the gridded pattern of the brick walls, at the faded linoleum floor.

Gaige glances over at Nisha. "Think he's got something to do with this?"

She shakes her head. "Doubt it. Look at him: he's restless. Nervous. Not exactly the body language of a guilty man. But that doesn't mean he doesn't know something."

"Think he's waited long enough?"

Nisha reaches for the wall, turning up the temperature control for the interrogation room. "Let's do this."

The door bangs open as Nisha and Gaige stride into the room. The rat leans back in his chair, jerking his wrists until the restraints dig into his arms. Nisha sets Officer Banks's badge down on the table with a loud clatter. "Start talking," she growls.

The rat's eyes dart down from the badge on the table to the one on Nisha's lapel, then into her glowering eyes. He stammers, leaning back in his chair, before Gaige puts her hand on Nisha's shoulder and guides her aside, taking her place across the table from the rat. "Let's start with your name," she says, her voice warm and calm.

The rat's eyes follow Nisha as she paces alongside the windows showing the rest of the station. She zips the blinds shut.

"Hey." Gaige puts her palms on the table, trying to establish eye contact. "Don't mind her. What's your name?"

The rat's eyes dart between the two of them for a moment before he looks up at Gaige. "It'sssss... Ssssssmeg."

Gaige blinks, doing her best to keep from betraying her disgust. "Alright, Smeg. I want to help you out here. But I'm going to need you to cooperate, okay? Tell me about this." She taps a metal finger against the badge, staring into the beady eyes behind the red goggles.

He looks down at the badge suspiciously. "I don't—"

"Cut the shit!" Nisha barks. Gaige straightens up and steps away from the table, and Nisha takes her place, slamming her palms down onto the steel. "You expect me to believe you have _no_ idea how this badge made its way into your pocket?" She leans over further, narrowing her eyes at him. "You think I'm stupid?"

Smeg recoils in his chair, shaking his head and staring back at Nisha. Gaige walks up to the side of the table and again guides Nisha away. "Hey. Look at me." The rat turns his confused stare up to her, and she nods encouragingly. "If you didn't do anything wrong, then you don't have anything to hide, right? The best thing you can do for yourself is speak up. So why don't you tell me how you got your hands on that badge?"

His eyes flicker back down to the badge, then up into Gaige's eyes. He shakes his head. "Don't remember..." He once again looks over at Nisha, only daring to do so when she isn't staring back at him. He wrings his clawed hands.

"Look," Gaige says, putting a hand on the table and leaning closer to him. "My partner here can be a reasonable woman. But if you keep dodging our questions, trying to protect somebody, our relationship is going to become adversarial."

The rat opens his mouth to speak, then hesitates. Nisha turns on her heel and cuts in. "I'm running a little short on patience here, Smeg. One of my officers turns up dead a week ago, and now here you are, badge in hand like—"

"Dead?" He shakes his head and slides the badge away from him. "I had nnnnothing to do with thisssss!"

Gaige pulls up a chair beside the table and sits. "No. Of course you didn't. But I think you know somebody who did. It's alright. You don't need to protect them."

His eyes linger on the badge as his breath rasps heavily through his mask. After a moment, he looks over at Gaige. "I traded for it. Gave up a nnnniccce rifle, yesssss. Wanted to melt the gold. Make ringsssss... necklacessss."

Nodding, Gaige rests her cheek in her palm. "Who gave it to you?"

The rat glances up at Nisha, then quickly averts his eyes. His throat rumbles before he answers. "Don't know his name. Ssssshhhhort. Ssssmellssss like a fesssstering rakk hive. One of the Ripper ratsssss."

Gaige and Nisha exchange a look. She's not exactly sure how that information will help narrow down which rat he's talking about. "You remember anything else?"

Smeg looks down at his cuffed hands for a moment in quiet contemplation. "His eyesssss. Yellow eyessssss."

Gaige glances back up at Nisha, who tilts her head towards the door. She taps her metal hand against the table. "This is good. This helps. If you think of anything else, let us know."

The door to the interrogation room slams shut behind her as she catches up to Nisha. "Impressive," she says, falling into step beside her. "I didn't see you blink once the whole time you were looking at him."

Nisha smirks. "He was easy."

"So, think he's telling the truth?"

"If I didn't, do you think I would've left the room?" She shakes her head dismissively. "No, Banks was in pieces when we found him. Whatever killed him was huge. There's no way one rat did that. Besides, you saw how he reacted when I told him Banks was dead. He had no clue. The only thing _he's _guilty of," she says, gesturing back to the Box, "is being an idiot. Who the fuck gives away a perfectly good rifle for a hunk of metal?"

Gaige snorts and shakes her head. "Well, you know how those rats are. Maybe it wasn't a perfectly good rifle. So, you think he was telling the truth about the Rippers?"

Nisha shakes her head. "Doubt it." She sighs, then after a beat, adds, "Rats tend to dispose of the remains after they eat somebody."

Gaige blinks. In all the rat hideaways she has been in, she never did see any stripped bones. "Well. Maybe they took him but didn't kill him. I mean, if this thing that killed him is as big as you say it is, don't you think somebody would've seen something?"

"You'd think so, wouldn't you?" She stops just outside her office, hand on the knob. "Hey, Winger, go and cut Smeg loose."

Winger looks over at her, brows furrowed. "Beg pardon?"

"The rat in the Box," she says, gesturing back to the interrogation room.

"You sure about that?" he says, getting to his feet.

Her jaw muscles clench as she exhales sharply. "I don't like it either, but he's the only one who seems to know anything about this. He doesn't know anything useful, so just get him out of here. Have Parsons and Cavanaugh tail him. See if he tries to meet up with those Ripper rats again. Hell, maybe they'll find out he is involved." She chuckles to herself. "Then I'll nail his oily hide to the wall."

Frowning, he nods and heads for the interrogation room. Nisha steps into her office, Gaige tailing behind her. She hangs her purple hat on a hook, then sits back in her chair, propping her boots up on the desk. "There's something big out there. I don't like it."

Gaige snorts as she sits on the couch by the wall. "This is _Pandora_. If there's only _one_ big ugly monster out there, I'd say we're lucky."

Nisha chuckles. "Good point."

"So." She stretches her legs out over the couch, crossing her right ankle over her left. "Our only lead is a rat who may or may not have yellow eyes, who may or may not be part of the Ripper clan. I'm gonna take a wild guess that you're not going to try and start an all-out war with them."

She looks pointedly over at Nisha, who nods slowly. "Sounds about right."

Gaige shakes her head. "Poor Evelyn. Can you imagine what she must be going through? Her fiancé turns up dead, rats scavenged everything that was on him, and we're left with no reliable leads."

Nisha chews her lip. Gaige can tell she's thinking of telling her how stupid it was that she had promised Banks's fiancée that they would find whoever took him and make them pay.

"But at least we found him, right?" Gaige says meekly. "She doesn't have to wonder if he's out there, suffering. That's something, right?"

Turning in her chair to face Gaige, Nisha raises an eyebrow. "There a deeper reason for you asking me that?"

She scoffs and shakes her head. "Please." She adjusts her hat demonstratively. "I've moved on. Grown up. Can't go home again. Besides, I don't think any of us were under the illusion that we would stay together after taking down Jack." She looks out the window at the canvas of barren desert stretched out under the night sky.

She doesn't think about her old friends often anymore. Sometimes when she works on Deathtrap, she expects to get interrupted by Scooter asking for help on Sanctuary's engines, or Axton telling her everything she's doing wrong when she tries to augment her bot with elemental capacitors. But none of them have messaged her in the past several days, and she doesn't think about trying to contact them anymore. She hasn't read or listened to any of the messages they left her. But she still hasn't gathered the courage to delete them.

Pandora's sister planet Pyrrha hangs low over the horizon, its white glow dwarfing the stars. She narrows her eyes, then turns to Nisha. "What happened to Sanctuary?"

Nisha scrutinizes her with a frown. "They landed that old wreck a week ago. Didn't you notice?"

"No." Gaige blinks, then slowly looks back out to the horizon. She smiles. "No, I didn't."

* * *

It's still dark when Gaige jolts awake, the night air cooling the thin sheen of sweat on her skin. How many nights has she spent lying awake in this bed, heart hammering in her chest?

Her shoulder tenses up momentarily at the touch of a warm hand.

"Nightmare?" Nisha asks, her breath warm on the back of Gaige's neck.

Gaige sighs, then nods. "Did I wake you?" Nisha doesn't answer, and instead swirls her thumb into Gaige's shoulder muscles. "Sorry."

"You alright?" She presses up against Gaige's back, slipping her arm around her.

Gaige puts her hand on top of Nisha's, then lets out a tired sigh. "I was... dreaming about those trailers again. Most nights, I can still smell the butane... And I can hear them _screaming_ in there as the flames roar against the night sky. Coughing up smoke. Pounding against the doors." She trails off. Try as she might, parts of her past won't be left behind her so easily. In the dark of the night, she can still see those gas tanks exploding. In the stillness of her room, she can hear the howls. She looks over her shoulder at Nisha. "Do they ever go away?"

"When did I ever say anything about having nightmares?"

"Oh." Gaige lays her head back down on her pillow. "Never mind, then." She reaches off the side of the bed towards the ground, grasping at air before realizing Dukino must have gone out to hunt.

Behind her, Nisha sighs. She brushes her fingertips over the nape of Gaige's neck. "Maybe when we're dead," she mutters. "But if they stop before that, you'll be the first to know."

She's always believed that if Hell exists, it wouldn't be a physical place: it would be a state of reliving the worst day of her life, over and over again. Was that night in The Dust going to follow her wherever she went, be waiting for her whenever her head hit a pillow? "That's not exactly a comforting thought." She rolls onto her back, staring at the fan hanging from the ceiling above her. "What good is saving the planet if I can't even live with myself?"

Nisha props herself onto her elbow. "Not knowing _how_ to live with yourself isn't the same as not being able to."

She repeats the words in her head a few times, trying to figure out if Nisha is onto something, or she's just trying to make her feel better. Hesitantly, she clears her throat. "I don't know. It's just something... something about the _eyes_. When you look into someone's eyes, right as they're dying. There's like a... a flicker in them. I remember seeing it in Marcie's eyes. It was..." She rubs her forehead with the heel of her hand. "I don't know. Deathtrap swiped at her, and then she wasn't _mad_ or _scared_, she was just... surprised. And then she was..." She croaks out the last word: "Everywhere.

Her breath rasps in her throat, and she wets the roof of her mouth with her tongue. "But then with Angel... she was so-... I think seeing her die scared me more than anything I'd seen before. It still scares me. She actually looked fucking _happy_ that she was dying! I mean..." She closes her eyes. Angel's face flashes before her. She snaps her eyes open. "Not just relieved. But actually..."

"Happy."

"But then there was Ramona. I didn't even hesitate when I killed her. And it wasn't even because I knew she would kill me. I just wanted her gone."

Nisha's fingers wrap around Gaige's right hand. "Ramona Lambert was a manipulative woman who took advantage of weak and insecure people." She kisses her fingers. "One less filthy degenerate walking the streets. Well, two, with her twin brother."

Gaige brushes her fingers against Nisha's cheek. "I like that the bandits wear masks. I don't have to see their faces."

The wind whispers through the open window, rustling the violet curtains. Nisha's fingertips rustle the sheets, then trace along Gaige's hairline. Gaige looks up into her eyes. They look softer in the blue of the night.

"Where are you in all of this? I mean I lie here and talk about it as often as I do, but... what about you? This doesn't affect you? I mean, do you just get used to it, or...?"

Her lips press together into a thin line. "I've been doing this a lot longer than you have."

Gaige locks into her gaze. "Do you ever think about the first person you killed?"

Nisha averts her eyes, then lies on her back. After a long silence, she clears her throat. "Of course I do. He killed my sister."

Her skin prickles with goosebumps. She rolls onto her side and takes Nisha's hand in hers. "You never told me you had a sister," she whispers. "How old was she when she died?"

"Thirteen." Nisha tucks her other hand under her head and stares up vacantly past the ceiling. Gaige slowly puts her arm around her. "Two years younger than me."

"I'm so sorry." She kisses Nisha's bare shoulder, then rests her chin against it. "I can't even imagine..."

"I don't regret it," Nisha says. Her voice is low and full of conviction, but her eyes are distant, flickering over images that aren't there. She's sure Nisha saw that written all over her own face just minutes earlier. "I didn't take any pleasure in it, but I don't regret it."

Gaige nods and kisses each of Nisha's fingers. "Life's too short for regrets, right?" she says, smiling weakly.

Her eyes flicker down for a moment, then lock back onto Gaige's. "Actually, that's not true: I regret not killing the bastard sooner."

She feels the encouragement drain out of her smile. "I'm sorry," she whispers again before leaning in to kiss her lips. Nisha's other hand plunges into her hair, keeping their foreheads pressed together when they break their kiss.

"Don't be," she whispers. "I'm alive. He isn't."

As simple as the sentiment is, Gaige feels a smile creep back over her face and a warmth spreading in her chest. She presses herself up against Nisha, wrapping her arm around her. She closes her eyes as the gentle cadence of Nisha's breath soothes her into stillness.

With every day that has passed on this desolate planet, with every doubt that has plagued her mind, with every obstacle she has overcome, with everything and everyone she has lost, she can't help but feel that she has found something worth holding onto.


End file.
